Revenant
by notmanos
Summary: While Angel tries to find out who's intending to open a Hellmouth in L.A., Logan goes after answers of his own, and neither like what they find.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: The character of Wolverine is owned by 20th Century Fox and Marvel Comics. No copyright infringement intended. The characters of Angel & Buffy the Vampire Slayer are owned by 20th Century Fox and Mutant Enemy. Bob and his crew are mine - kidnap them at your own peril. _

_N.B.: Takes place shortly after "X2", and directly after "The Memory of Water"._

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**Revenant  
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1

Angel barely even glanced at the money, and Bren didn't know how he did it. He felt like throwing himself across the room and grabbing it, before she closed the case and took it away. "I told you to get out," Angel snarled.

But Sagawa just gazed at him haughtily, not as scared as she should have been. "Don't you want to even hear what for?"

Angel had his stone face on, the one that seemed to be his impersonation of a brick wall, and he crossed his arms over his chest, glaring down at her like she was an especially pesky bug. "You guys never get any new tricks. How stupid do you think I am?"

She barked a laugh that sounded sharp and brittle. "You think it's all about you? How remarkably short sighted, Angel. There's more going on than you realize."

His glare was unwavering. "So it's a bigger trap, is that it?"

"Come now, Angel, I think your relationship with us has moved beyond threats and insults. You may think we hold a grudge, but believe me, we don't." He scoffed, but her sly, sharp smile remained fixed on her face. "You never hurt us, Angel. The Senior Partners exist across time, space, and dimensions. Did you think destroying a single building and a few employees meant anything at all? It wasn't even a drop in the ocean, and you could kill us from now until the end of your existence, and still not make a ripple. Bit of an ego blow, isn't it?"

Ouch. Bren couldn't help but grimace, but luckily neither of them were looking in his direction. "What if I kill you?" Angel shot back.

Her smile became broader, and just slightly insane. "Well, I am a normal Human. I don't think that would fit your hero image very well, would it?"

"Should I call Logan?" Bren interrupted, fixing her with a glare of his own. She shot a sudden, sharp look at him, but he was pretty sure that got her attention. To be honest, Logan wasn't going to kill a woman in cold blood, but even she had to know he wasn't bound by the same codes as Angel was. From the briefly startled look in her eye, she did know that.

"Maybe in a minute," Angel replied, keeping his eyes fixed on Sagawa.

"This charade is amusing, but a waste of my time," she said coldly, meeting Angel's gaze once more. The mention of Logan seemed to have short circuited the verbal pissing contest. "We want to hire you to find out who it is that's trying to open a Hellmouth in the city and stop them."

It was Angel's turn to look surprised. "What?"

"You think we don't know when something's trying to make an incursion? We do, and we know you and your little entourage shut down the initial attempt. But surely you know that wasn't the last."

He shook his head, more in bewilderment than anything else. "What kind of shitty trick is this?"

"It's not a trick. We haven't sanctioned this, and we won't allow it. We have tried to discover who is behind it, but the problem is there are so many heaven dimensions -"

"Hell dimensions," Angel interrupted.

She rolled her eyes. " - whatever, that by the time we pinpoint it this whole thing could all be over. Since you're already involved in this, it seemed like the wisest course of action to simply finance your continuing efforts."

Angel studied her for several long seconds, as if trying to see through her. Finally he chuckled humorously. "The Senior Partners are scared."

The expression on her face soured, sharpened, and suddenly she didn't seem as attractive anymore. "They don't have anything to fear."

"Yes, they do. Even demon gods meet their match from time to time, and this is one of those cases, isn't it?"

"Did you get that wisdom from Bob?" She said his name like it was a venereal disease.

"At least he's willing to admit when he's outmatched." Angel reached down and shut the briefcase, clicking the locks before shoving it back into her hands. Bren almost stood and almost said _"NO!" _but managed to swallow it back. It felt like agony, like swallowing razor blades. "I don't work for you people, ever. Get out."

She took a step back, and grunted in ill humor, shifting the briefcase to her left hand. "Are you seriously telling me that you're not going to pursue this? That's bullshit and you know it."

"I don't accept blood money."

"Oh Jesus, listen to little miss melodrama. We want you to find this thing as soon as possible, and for that you need capital. You can't find a fucking thing while broke, Angel. Considering how long you were a homeless bum, you should know that."

Okay, that was nasty. (Angel was homeless once too? When?) Angel's look twisted, his eyes narrowed, and Bren was pretty sure he was trying hard not to vamp out. "I will never be beholden to you people again. Get. Out."

Again? Whoa, hey, he was missing an awful lot of back story here. The problem was, he wasn't sure Angel would ever tell him. (Maybe he should ask Xander - perhaps he'd know.) "Fine, be that way." She turned sharply on her spiked heels, but on her walk out the door she snap tossed a card that landed on the desk right in front of Bren. It was a card that looked like it was made of aged parchment, and said, in blood red ink, _'Kaya Sagawa Esq., Wolfram and Hart ,Extra Human Division/Extra Dimensional Liaison'. _Extra Human? Was that a nice way of saying demon? She had an office phone number, a cell phone number, a pager number, a fax machine number, and e-mail address listed, and something called an "extra dimensional locator code", whatever the hell that was, on the card. It was a fascinating blend of the mundane and the bizarre. "Call me if you regain your sanity and grow a pair."

As soon as she was out the door, Angel slammed it behind her.

Bren waited a moment, the air so tense and thick he was pretty sure he could rip out big hunks of it with his hands, then said, "Umm, you know, we could've used -"

"Don't," he snapped, wheeling towards him. Angel was about a moment away from vamping out; he could almost see the vampire lurking just beneath the surface of his skin, and it took him aback. He hadn't realized he was quite that angry.

Angel paused, looking away and swallowing hard, and as soon as he got his temper under control, he looked back at him, his expression one of purely Human disapproval. "I know financially we're in a hole. But there are strings attached to that money, and if we accept it, we'll be trapped. Do you understand? We can't trust them."

"I know, but ..." he sighed, rubbing his hand through his hair. Yes, he was right, and he had no argument for it, except they were so fucking poor they might actually have to go out of business. But he knew Angel would rather do that than sign up with Wolfram and Hart again. "Shit. And now we have a new worry. I mean, if the Senior Partners are bugging out about this, shouldn't we be extra concerned?"

A muscle in Angel's jaw jumped, and Bren knew that wasn't good. Bob had doubts he could find this ... god, demon, whatever the hell, and now the Senior Partners had doubts. So what could flummox the power of good and the power of evil equally?

Bren couldn't even begin to guess the answer, but he knew from experience that whatever it was, they'd be lucky to survive it.

* * *

Maybe it was shell shock, or maybe he'd lost his nerve; Logan didn't know, and honestly, he almost didn't want to know.

Faith would be leaving for Tokyo in two days time, and he told Marc he wanted to be with her until them, mainly because he didn't want her to worry about him. It was a lie, as he wasn't going to tell her anything about this.

But Marc agreed easily and readily, once again proving he was the best friend he had on this entire planet. He said he'd go ahead to Toronto and track Lafayette's movements, see if he could spot a pattern to his movements or who he met with, so they'd be ready to make a good move when Logan was ready. It actually sounded like a solid plan.

He thought he was being clever and sneaky, but the night before she left, he took her out to see a revival of Le Samourai at an art house theater downtown - he couldn't believe she'd never seen it - when she turned to him as they waited for the lights to go down, and asked, "Are you gonna tell me what's wrong?"

He kept his look neutral as he glanced at her. "What d'ya mean?"

"You've been very quiet lately."

"I'm always quiet."

She rolled her eyes. "Quieter. You know what I mean."

He shrugged, and lied. "Not really. I guess I'm not sure where I'll go once you're gone." See, that was a good thing to say to a girlfriend; it always got you credit. The fact that it was partially true was almost beside the point.

She smiled and put a hand on his arm. "You're a lying sack of shit. But I appreciate it." She then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Luckily the lights went down, so he didn't have to come up with something else.

They got caught up in the movie, and by the time they left, they were too busy discussing where they wanted to eat and she was teasing him about liking French films. She accused him of being "closet pretentious", and he began suggesting even grottier places where they could eat.

The theater wasn't in the best neighborhood, but they had no problem walking, no matter the loiterers or the broken streetlights - what did _they_ have to worry about?

They'd decided on a restaurant a couple of blocks over, fairly casual but with a good selection of beer and a damn fine cheeseburger - now he was going to show her that poutine existed, after that "pretentious" comment she probably deserved worse (but Tim Horton's coffee was just too cruel) - but when they came to the corner, they were suddenly confronted by a large young man, maybe six seven and nineteen years old, reeking of alcohol and methamphetamines, and brandishing a hunting knife. "Give me your wallets," he grumbled, trying to sound menacing. The nervous flop sweat coming off him smelled like cat piss. A slightly less smelly friend crowded in behind them.

He and Faith exchanged a look, and Faith was unable to keep a straight face. "Oh my god, you can't be serious," she said, bursting into laughter.

Logan couldn't help but snicker too. "Outta all the people out here, you pick _us_? Bub, you have the shittiest instincts in the world."

"Shut up!" he snapped, and jabbed the knife towards Logan's face. He didn't rear back, and the tip came within an inch of cutting his face. The would be mugger was startled by his lack of movement, but wasn't ready to give up so easily. "Give me your fucking money!"

Faith managed to stop laughing, but she was slightly red faced and wiping tears from her eyes. "Dude, I really don't wanna hafta kick your ass. So just walk away now, okay?"

"Shut the fuck up, bitch! Give me your goddamn money before I cut your fuckin' throat!"

That was it. They'd given him more of a chance than he deserved, and now Logan was sure whatever patience he had was gone. "Zero or one hundred?" he asked Faith.

They were directional descriptions; zero was the man behind them, one hundred was the man in front of them.

"One hundred," she said.

"What the fuck -" the stinky guy snapped, but that was all he was able to say. Faith kicked the knife out of his hand, then spun and gave him a side kick right in the side of the head. Logan had spun at the same time, grabbing the outstretched arm of the second attacker (he too had a knife, but it was smaller) and twisting it until it snapped like a tree branch. He had inhaled to scream, but Logan had already given him a right hook to the face, hard enough that there were more cracking noises, and he was unconscious before he hit the ground. Looking back, Faith's guy was down and out as well, as the kick to the head had been it for him. Faith was still standing in a ready position, hands curled into fists and held up in a classic defensive stance, and she seemed a bit disappointed that he wasn't trying to get up. "Damn it, I think I hit him too hard," she noted. "I'm still more accustomed to demons."

"Maybe we should spar sometime."

She scoffed and lowered her fists. "Yeah right, Iron Man, I'm gonna take you up on that."

"You could wear gloves."

"And where's the fun in that?" She kicked stinky guy in the leg gently, but he still didn't move. "So what do we do now?"

"We could leave 'em to rot," he suggested, but she frowned at him, and he knew that wasn't going to fly. So he pulled out his cell phone and called an ambulance, giving nothing but the street name and a vague description before hanging up. They couldn't trace a cell, so he wasn't worried about it.

They walked on, but not before he and Faith blunted their knives by breaking the blades; fucks like this shouldn't have weapons. They were almost two blocks away when the ambulance screamed past, and he couldn't help but notice how bright Faith's eyes were, how rosy the glow of her skin. "Felt good, didn't it?"

Embarrassment briefly flashed through her eyes, but then she remembered who she was with. "Yeah. I'm kinda sorry they didn't last longer, ya know? I haven't had a good fight in a long time." She grimaced then, looking down at the pavement. "Shit, I sound like old evil Faith now."

"No. Yer a Slayer - you girls are born to fight, right?"

"Demons, yeah."

"So why don't we go find some?"

Her look was curious, intense, and she was fighting down a smile. "What? You mean now?"

"Sure. It's night, and Vancouver has vampires; I know, I've seen 'em. So let's go kick some undead ass, build up an appetite."

She paused, and Logan had to stop so he didn't walk right past her. They were in a better lit, more crowded area, one with light and sound, and no one looked interested in mugging anyone; several of them did look drunk though, and smelled almost as bad. "I haven't been hunting in a while," she said, and she sounded half aroused and half terrified.

He knew she still felt terrible over her "bad days" (or as she liked to say "crazy ass evil days"), but he also knew that she was a woman of action, and beating down demons was always a treat. He also knew fighting sent her sex drive into overdrive, but that was kind of a negative, as her sex drive was pretty revved up all on its own. (How she treated men without the gift of a healing factor he had no idea, but he wouldn't have been surprised if she'd accidentally killed one.) "Where do vampires normally hang out?" he prompted. He actually knew - or at least could guess - but he wanted her to make the choice.

She did, with frightening ease. "Nightclubs, especially trendy ones that skew young. All that innocence and sexual energy draws 'em likes flies to shit; virgin blood is like an espresso to them."

"Great, there's one up the road. Let's hit it, dust a few bad guys, then go grab a burger. What d'ya say?"

A lush, full smile seemed to light up her whole face, making her look too young and more frighteningly attractive than usual. "I say hell yeah, let's go."

At least it didn't take much to make her happy. And he wouldn't have to tell her that as soon as she was gone, he might become the most wanted in all of Canada.

Well, at least that probably wasn't new.

* * *

When Bob stared at you in that way, it was impossible not to squirm. It was like being pinned down by solid spotlights, his pupils almost swirling as the energy threatened to come out. "Say that again," he said, although he said it like a threat.

Angel faked a sigh and dry washed his face, mainly so he could tear his gaze away from Bob's. Sometimes when he was highly emotional, Bob could accidentally become the humanoid equivalent of a magnet, making you riveted to him until he became aware enough of it to break the trance. "You could talk to them if you'd think they'd respond better to you -"

"Are you kidding me, mate? They're fucking fed up with me; they're on the verge of revoking my powers as it is. If they wanted me to know something, they'd have told me already."

"Shouldn't they be concerned?"

Bob scoffed. "They don't have much to do with this plane, believe it or not. They'd rather leave it to others."

"And I'm one of those others, right? Their "champion". So I need to talk to them."

All day he and Giles had exhausted all their contacts and all avenues that they thought might yield information. Even Bren and Kier had helped out, hitting their contacts and quizzing the most knowledgeable demons on the street, but no one knew anything about demon lords itching to open a gateway to this dimension. Giles called the re-formed Watcher's Council in Australia, but since he wasn't of them anymore, they all but hung up on him. He still had Watcher friends, but they'd heard nothing, seen no portents, and seemed reluctant to talk to him for long.

So they were pretty much fucked. They had no information on the potential Hellmouth, no idea where or when it could spring up, or who or what might be behind it. Bob was their last shot, but when Angel finally got a hold of him, he'd had no luck either.

Angel had come down to the Way Station as soon as the sun went down, and now they were sitting in Bob's back office, where the crates of supposed weapons sat piled against the side walls, some with really startling and presumably funny (to Bob) labels. Angel's personal favorite was the one that said _"Light fuse and get away quickly" _in Romanian. He could hear the bass line of some Public Enemy song bleeding through the walls, and for some unexplained reason the office smelled of fresh hay, even though he couldn't see any of it anywhere.

This was an idea born of total desperation: he decided to talk to the Powers That Be. The problem was that wasn't easy. He knew there was a place where they used to make contact with people, but they weren't there anymore, and he had no idea if there were any other places where they would leave themselves open to communication. But if anyone would know, it would be Bob.

He thought Bob might not be overjoyed at the idea, but he didn't exactly expect this level of resistance. "Angel, look," Bob sighed, running a hand through his hair and ruffling it. He was sitting behind his desk, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the baffling phrase _"Australian Curling Team Reject - Not Drunk Enough To Qualify". _"If you force communication with them, they could get pissed off, and not only tell you nothing, but hurt you in some way."

"I'll risk it."

Bob glared at him again, but this time it didn't feel like a physical blow. "You're needed here and now. I'm not sure I'm willing to risk you."

"It's my choice, Bob, and if you have a better idea, I'm willing to hear it."

A pen suddenly appeared between Bob's fingers, and he tapped it restlessly on the desk. "Degei's got his snakes scattered about, trying to get information from various dimensions."

"And how long will it take before he gets back to you with something useful?"

Bob scowled at him, and seemed to be beating a tattoo on his desk with the pen before he made the pen suddenly disappear. "Oh fuck," he cursed, shoving himself away from his desk and levering himself to his feet. "You're gonna be sorry about this, Angel. Maybe I should do it; at least they're already pissed off at me."

Angel shook his head. He was sure Bob was right that they would have told him if they had wanted him to know. Maybe they didn't care, but they did owe him an explanation. He was their champion, right? Their bitch? The least they could do was talk to him. "I need to do this. Where do I make contact with them?"

"Where?" Bob walked past him, giving him a "follow me" gesture with his hand. Angel did, but not without a certain amount of wariness. If Bob decided to talk to the PTB's and stop him from doing it, there was nothing he could do to stop him.

He followed Bob down the small, darkened hall in the back of the Way Station, but oddly enough it seemed longer and darker than usual, and the music seemed to recede as if it was on a ship rapidly sailing away. It was so strange he looked up the hall, but he could see the front room of the bar and its delicately yellowed light quite clearly; it seemed barely ten feet away from him.

So why had he been following Bob down the hall for two minutes?

Finally Bob stopped in front of a weathered wooden door, one Angel was sure he'd never seen in the bar before. "If I didn't think there was a chance they'd be more receptive to you than me, I'd do it myself," he said. "And if things get … heavy, just shout Makara."

"Why Makara?"

Bob flashed him a weak smile that pretty much said he wasn't going to tell him. "It's a safe word. Don't worry about it."

He glared at him. "Where do I go, Bob?"

"Through the door."

He looked between him and the door in disbelief. "You have a mystical portal to the Powers That Be in the back of the bar?"

Bob shrugged a single shoulder, and Angel saw that the phrase on the t-shirt had morphed into symbols he didn't recognize, but looked runic in nature. "They keep me on a tight leash."

Angel knew that couldn't be the entire explanation, but he doubted Bob would tell him what it was. Angel steeled himself, wondered briefly if this was a joke (he'd kill Bob if it was), then wrapped his hand around the doorknob. Oddly enough it felt cold; cold enough that his flesh might stick to it. He turned it and shoved the door open, and took a single step over the threshold -

- and then found himself falling, plummeting in Stygian darkness at a thousand feet per second, with no door, no boundaries, no visual cues whatsoever. As far as he knew, he'd just materialized a thousand feet above the earth.

Oh yeah, he was definitely going to kill Bob.


	2. Chapter 2

After a moment, though, he impacted hard with the cold ground, enough to rattle every bone in his body. When he looked up, he was slapped in the face with frigid gravel, and had to squint at the bright, glaring light.

No, wait.

He was apparently laying flat out on an arctic tundra, the hard packed snow under him so cold it felt like it was burning his skin even as it melted, and the snow seemed to be blowing in almost vertically, making it hard to open his eyes and see. The sun was up there somewhere beneath a layer of clouds like steel wool, and enough of it got through to bounce off the all encompassing whiteness and create an awful glare that made his eyes water.

He pushed himself up to his knees, and looked around as best he could. He realized he was all alone on a featureless expanse of ice and snow, although he had the definite impression he was being watched. He stood up, fighting the wind, and couldn't believe how cold he felt. As a vampire - or, in other terms, a dead person - he usually didn't notice temperatures, unless it was at some terrible extreme. The fact that the cold struck him as so biting and painful meant it probably would have been instantly fatal to a Human being, and many other demons. Since he was already dead, he wasn't going to freeze to death, nor was frostbite going to be a problem, but he could be a vamp Popsicle if he was here long enough. "I get it, you don't want me here," he shouted, his voice torn by the howling wind. "But I need your help."

For nearly a minute there was no reply, just the wind screaming past him, snow being thrown into his face like shrapnel. Then a voice responded, a single one made up of a dozen different components, one that seemed to sound like it was both in front of him and behind him simultaneously. "You disturb us. We don't like it."

"An enemy of yours is trying to break into your territory. Don't you care?"

The ensuing silence seemed almost hostile. He waited, feeling all his extremities slowly go numb, before the voice/voices said, "Enemies is a Human concept."

He shook his head in disbelief. "Call them what you want, but Bob doesn't like it, the Senior Partners don't like it, and yet no one knows what's going on. You can't tell me you have no idea what's going on. Someone's trying to breach the dimension, open a Hellmouth. Are you going to tell me you don't give a shit?"

More silence, save for the howling winds, and his lips felt like they'd already turned to ice. He moved his fingers, hoping they wouldn't freeze next, as he waited for a response that seemed eons in the making. "There is a balance. If there is an imbalance, we will know."

"What the hell does that mean?" That was essentially no answer at all, and they all knew it.

The wind came up harder than before, and hit him like a tractor trailer to the chest. He went flying through the air, suddenly hit wood, and went slamming through the door, coming to a sudden stop against the wall of the hallway. A vertebrae hurt, and he wondered if he cracked it as he slid down to the floor.

Bob was standing over him, looking down with a slight grimace. "So, I take it things didn't go well?"

He glared hot, screaming death up at him. "Gee, what gave it away?"

In spite of his general dislike of all things PTB, he let Bob help him back up to his feet. Angel noticed, with a bit of a start, that there was no longer any door across from them - it was now a solid wall with a couple of torn band posters on it. Where the fuck had the door gone, and better yet, where had it come from?

"So they won't help," Bob sighed. It wasn't a question.

"All they said was "if there's an imbalance, we will know". "

That made Bob frown, his brow furrowing in consternation. "Bollocks."

"What does it mean?"

"It means they won't do anything unless the portal's open, and even then they'll only do their usual passive-aggressive bullshit of maneuvering people and other things into place to rectify it." He threw up his hands in disgust. "They've washed their hands of it."

"Great." So all that pain and trouble was for nothing. He worked his neck from side to side, trying to work out the kinks in his neck and back from impact, and wondered what his next step should be.

If there was a next step. Frankly, at this point, he didn't think there was. Maybe they were just going to have to wait for the shit to hit the fan, and then try and deal with the aftermath.

Damn it - this was seriously fucked up.

2

He and Faith spent the last two nights she had in Vancouver dusting vampires, which seemed to make her ecstatically happy, and also made her forget to continue quizzing him on what was up with him. He was still sorry to see her go, and told her to take care of herself quite sincerely - being a Slayer meant she was tougher than most, but it didn't make her indestructible.

He had a key to her apartment, and she was fine with him staying there on his own, but he didn't really want to do that. It was her space, and he wasn't going to loiter. He went back to it to get his stuff - such as it was - and maybe catch a nap before heading to Toronto. Faith always said slaying made her horny and hungry, so it was partially his fault. Speaking of which, he was pretty sure he needed to get rid of all those pizza boxes before he left, otherwise they might rot and make a hellacious stink by the time she got back.

He laid on their bed, staring up at the ceiling and watching the patterns sunlight made on it, and wondered what was wrong with him. Part of him just wanted to go to Lafayette's office and kick him out his fucking window for lying to him, and yet another part of him was weary, and almost didn't care. He kind of knew all along that the Organization was setting him up to take on Black Fire, didn't he? It seemed too coincidental that the leader was Keogh, and they sent him after him, one of the few mutants who could survive his ability to blow parts of people up. But he also knew that Keogh was a great enough threat that he had to take care of him, no matter if the Canadian government or the Organization sent him on the mission.

He wondered if he was depressed, or was simply becoming realistic. Maybe he should just stop trying to find out about his past, simply because he never liked a damn thing he found out. He was an assassin, the Organization's bitch; he was really good at his job. Freaky good; like maybe they only had to mindfuck him up to a certain point. Like maybe some people were simply born to destroy, born to kill. When he had a life - those rare times - it always seemed to devolve to violence. He had two wives that he knew of, and both had been murdered - one presumably by Stryker, the other by her own family. He had a kid too, as hard as that was to believe, and he was also murdered.

Maybe it was karma. Maybe he'd caused so much pain in his life that it had to boomerang, and he would feel it until he paid in full. He had no idea when that would be.

Could he be so chickenshit to Marc though? Could he tell him point blank that he was simply done finding out about his past because he wasn't sure he could take much more? He thought Marc might understand, but Logan wasn't perfectly sure _he _understood.

Lafayette was a liar. He could make him pay for that much, for using and manipulating him. But beyond that, he didn't know if he wanted anything else from him.

* * *

Colonel Peter Lafayette was getting ready to leave, tidying up his desk and shrugging on his coat, when his telephone rang. He had no intention of picking it up - it had been a long day, and he just wanted to get home and have a glass of wine, throw a steak on the grill - until he saw the line it was coming in on. It was the special line, one little used, and when used it was only by the highest ranking people. He _had_ to answer it, no matter what time it was.

With some reluctance, he picked up the receiver, his stomach knotting in anxiety. No news from this line was ever good. "Lafayette."

"Take a leave of absence," the voice said. It was male, somewhat deep, and he recognized it enough that identification wasn't necessary. "Do it now. Leave tonight."

"What?"

"A mercenary named Marcus Drury has been spotted near the building. He's known for his anti-Organization activities, and his connection to Logan. We believe this is a bad sign, and you may be in danger."

He felt like he'd been in punched in the gut, and sat down in his chair before he collapsed. "Me? Why -" But he knew why, didn't he? He knew more than he'd let on to Logan, and Logan seemed to suspect that. He'd probably just gotten his friend to try and prove it. He groaned and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm not guilty here. I didn't do anything -"

"You know how irrational Wolverine is. That you know something is enough."

No one understood the whole "need to know" thing better than him; there were just some things people were better off not knowing. It was bad enough that he knew it and had to find a way to sleep at night. But the things blocked out of Wolverine's record puzzled him to no end; there were many things that couldn't be considered a national security threat by any means, things that had long ago lost their importance if they ever had any, and yet the Organization made it clear that he learned nothing except what they allowed him to learn. He didn't understand why, and beyond "security concerns", they wouldn't tell him. It didn't make any sense to him; it seemed just like a bit of needless cruelty.

"Why don't you just give him something?" Lafayette wondered. "Something minor. Maybe if you gave him something to hold on to it'd back him off -"

"We do not negotiate with _his _kind. Take a leave, Colonel. We'll let you know when it's safe to return." Then there was nothing but dial tone.

He sighed and dropped the receiver in its cradle. He knew that wasn't so much a suggestion as an order, but he felt too old for this bullshit, too tired.

He had no choice but to take a leave of absence, he knew that, and he certainly had the time banked up - he hadn't taken a vacation in two years, nor a sick day in a year and a half. He had loads of personal time he could use.

But what he did after that was up to him, and he wasn't going to let them dictate that. He'd paid his dues, and he wasn't going to be ordered around like a grunt.

If he had to die, at least he could do it with a modicum of dignity.

* * *

He had been waiting so long in the trees that he almost didn't feel his body anymore.

A spider and possibly an ant had discovered this, and he could feel them crawling on his skin - one up his pant leg, the other across his back - but he ignored them as he ignored the tree limbs hanging down, brushing his face and his hair. His world had narrowed down to a single point, a view of the world through a high-powered rifle sight, and his view was simply a stretch of plain, grey road. He could see the edges crumbling where the cheap construction materials, weather, and time had eaten away at it, and he could see the drainage ditch on the side of the road, overgrown with weeds and nearly hidden from view. A bit of water sparkled in the bottom, and he caught movements of frogs and dragonflies. Life went on here, went on in this small forest, where the hum of insects and chirrups of birds had resumed its cacophony after becoming used to his presence, assuming him now to be just another part on the canopy.

Which is why he liked to stake out targets early, especially in a location like this. An aware man might notice that the birds had gone strangely silent, that there was no scurry rustle in the underbrush, and realize someone was there, someone who had already scared the animals away. It was rare people really paid that much attention, but he knew when the animals were silent that there were men, or had been men - either way, an obvious warning. He didn't give his targets that kind of signal.

He had no idea how long he'd been in the tree, stretched out across the length of a branch just barely wide enough for the width of his body, and with a perfect view of the road. He was about twenty feet up, which wasn't that high, but was high enough that it was doubtful anyone would look, and even then, the way he made the lower branch drape down, he wasn't visible. The only things sticking out of the leaves was the sight and the barrel of the gun, and as black as they were, with the sun behind the clouds, they weren't visible.

He had no idea how much time had passed. He entered what he liked to call his "Zen zone", the one where he had no thoughts, did not allow himself the luxury of it, and decided simply that he did not exist; time did not exist; this war did not exist. He was in this state a lot because he swore he could sometimes taste death on the wind, dead people, the taste of them clinging to the back of his throat, and no one ever seemed to know what he was talking about. They were like ghosts only he could see, ones only he knew were there. He wished he didn't know; he wished he didn't taste them on the wind.

It made him angry, and anger was no good for a sniper. So back to his Zen zone, where he was the wind whistling through the trees, where he was the branch the insects crawled upon, where the world ceased to exist beyond the small circle of the rifle sight.

He heard the whine of the motorcycle; and it was a bit more of a whine, not quite a rumble, and it was far away, but growing closer every second. There was little traffic on this road ever; the only other one today had been a German military truck, which combed the area earlier, the soldiers going through the forest on foot, as quiet as rabid water buffalos. They walked right beneath him several times, one paused to light a cigarette right beneath his branch. But he was the wind, he was the sky, and they never noticed him.

It occurred to him that, had he not had a mission, he could have killed them all quite easily. Fuck their numbers, their guns, their grenades. He would have torn most of them to pieces before they realized they were under attack, and he would have taken a grim pleasure in adding their number to the dead on the wind. No, it wouldn't make up for anything, it probably wasn't even close to justice, but sometimes revenge was the closest thing you could get, and he could be the vessels for those ghosts, if only because he was the only one who knew they were there.

The soldiers had been advance scouts for this man on the motorcycle, this man who liked to get away from his detachment and ride the back roads at tremendous speeds, free of his compliment of bodyguards. He had a little bit in the countryside, a mistress who was someone else's wife, and her location was too exposed for a hit. But here, on this road, speeding to his assignation, he was a perfect target, with the sole hitch - he never slowed down. He'd be going by at almost sixty miles per hour, and no matter what he tipped in the road, he'd simply drive off road around it.

It was a hard target, a hard hit, and the American who heard about it just stared at him. "You're saying you're good enough to make that shot? If you miss …"

"I won't miss," he replied, glaring back at him.

And he knew he wouldn't. He wasn't him now; he was nothing, he didn't exist. He was all vision and reflex, so when the bike verged on entering his limited circle of sight, he waited a beat before squeezing the trigger.

The driver was almost out of the circle of vision when he saw his head snap around like he'd been hit by an invisible fist, and something flew out the side of his head as he fell off the bike, the motorcycle slewing around and turning end over end until it splashed in the ditch, the rear wheel up and still spinning. The man was splayed out on the side of the road, not moving, liquid dark as oil spilling out of his broken head, and he felt no need to go check - clearly, he had hit the target, and that wound was not survivable; he was relatively sure that would have killed him as well.

He moved, sliding out of the tree, startling the things that hadn't been shocked into movement and silence by the gunshot. As he began to move quickly and quietly through the forest, he started to disassemble the German military rifle he'd used in the hit. There was nothing like planting seeds of doubt, fostering paranoia - even allies could easily be put at each other's throat.

He cast bits of it around as he fled, flinging it far from his path, and he paused at a small stream to wash his hands before following the water to throw off any dogs they might bring around (a long shot at best, but you could never be too careful). Rinsing his hands in the cold, clear water, Logan saw his reflection staring back at him, broken by ripples and drops. His eyes were hollow, staring at himself like he was still nothing, like he still didn't exist, and he wondered if that was actually true.

Logan woke up, and stared at the streaks of yellowed, later afternoon light painted across the ceiling.

Was that a memory, a dream, or both? What happened when you didn't know?

He didn't know if he should be fearful or relieved.

3

It was a sign of how desperate they were that when Bob admitted that _"Watching L.A. Confidential last night gave me an idea", _Angel still didn't dismiss it out of hand.

Rather than teleport them where he wanted to go, they walked in the sewer, so Bob could explain his plan. He started off with facts he already knew: no Hellmouth could be opened from the Earth side subtly. There was lots of blood, lots of pain, lots of ritual - it was hard to miss. But opening a Hellmouth from the other side, from another dimension, would be different.

If the being doing it could have opened it all at once, he would have already done so, so Bob figured he was opening it slowly, and as such, there should be some effects they could trace. "Think of it as living in a deep underground cavern," Bob said, making lots of pointless gestures with his hands. "If someone starts drilling from above, you probably won't notice it right away, but then maybe you'll start feeling vibrations, and dirt will start saltin' down on you, and you'll get the sense something's wonky, even if you don't know what or why until the drill bit bursts through your ceiling and impales you."

That was a colorful analogy. But once he sifted through it, it almost made a kind of sense. "What you're saying is that even if we can't detect the rift, we should be able to find it by … some odd effect around it."

"Bingo. I'd give you a stuffed koala, but you wouldn't appreciate it."

Angel glared at his back, and briefly considered smacking him in the back of the head. "God you're weird."

Bob shrugged, and looked over his shoulder at him, flashing him his shit eating grin. "Even the weird need a god, Angel."

He couldn't argue with that - okay, maybe he could, but it seemed like a waste of time - so he stuck to the topic at hand. "What effects are we looking for?"

Bob rubbed the back of his neck. "Ah, see …I'm not sure."

Why couldn't he have guessed that? Angel threw up his hands. "Wonderful. And what the hell does L.A. Confidential have to do with _any_ of this?"

"Oh, see, there I have an explanation. We're going to the cops."

Angel grabbed his arm and stopped him, swinging Bob around to face him. "We're what? Why?"

Bob eased his arm out of his grip, his expression unchanging. Angel was convinced that Bob could be up to his neck in lava, and he'd still look annoyingly nonchalant. "I'm not sure what the weird effects will be - it could range from dogs suddenly meowing and water going down the drain in the opposite direction to a full blown murder spree by a guy wearing a dance belt and a snorkel, but no matter what it is, people will probably call the cops to complain about it, 'cause that's what normal people do. Something weird happens, they bitch to the coppers, even if they can't do anything about it; they just want their complaints noted."

Oddly enough, that made a certain kind of sense. Any time Bob made sense, it was a scary thing. "This is L.A., home of Wolfram and Hart and one of the largest demon populations outside of the former Sunnydale. Their reports of weirdness are probably voluminous, Bob, you must know that."

"Yeah, but we're looking for a large volume of recent reports in a single area. That should narrow things down a bit."

That made him scoff. "That's still going to take hours."

"No, it won't." Bob smiled in a very unsettling way. "What I ask for I get. You keep forgetting that."

Angel stared at him in disbelief. "You can't seriously think you'll enthrall the _entire_ LAPD."

That disturbing, sly smile remained firmly affixed to his face. "Can, will. You should know better than that by now, Angel."

He managed to force out a very realistic sigh. "So why the hell am I here?"

"Because there's lots of ground to cover, you have good instincts, and I'm not sure you'd believe that I didn't hurt anyone if you didn't witness it for yourself."

Although he scowled at him, certain Bob was blowing sunshine up his skirt, he decided to accept it. After all, what else could he do?

There was a manhole cover in an alley just beyond the police station, which is where they came up to the surface, and luckily the sun had gone down, so Angel could join him.

He followed Bob into the police station, a drab and somewhat intimidating industrial looking building, and it was clear the joint was jumping, with a whole section of perps in chairs and benches (some handcuffed), awaiting fingerprinting, interviews with a detective, or some other police procedure. An obviously drunk man was having a conversation with the floor, and another man who appeared to be a classic skinhead was shouting racial epithets at everyone in his range of vision, while the desk sergeant shouted at him to "shut his piehole". "Freeze," Bob announced, and everyone stopped what they were doing; even the skinhead had his mouth frozen in a half open position that could have been a curse or a scream. Bob leaned down to look at him, and said, "You're an idiot, you know? Grow up."

He then straightened and went to the desk sergeant, who was frozen with one foot raised as he walked between his desk and the coffee maker. "Okay, talk to me. You've been getting reports of several weird incidents. Where from, and for how long?"

The cop unfroze, blinked as if confused, and then became totally enrapt in Bob's gaze. He was a stocky Hispanic man with thinning hair and a pencil thin mustache that would have made John Waters envious. "We've had a lot of strange incident reports come in. From Sunset, Resida, West Hollywood, Brentwood, Sepulveda -"

Bob cocked his head to the side. "Brentwood? Now that doesn't belong on the list. What's been happening in Brentwood?"

What did he mean it didn't belong on the list? Did Bob have a list of where weird shit was supposed to be? Actually, it wouldn't surprise him if he did.

The cop, whose name was apparently Sanchez, just shrugged. "Lots of missing persons reports came in, but it turned out almost everyone reported missing was still there, just not answerin' their phone or going out. We've also had a lot of pets reported missing, some people complaining about people or animals going through their garbage, car alarms going off for no reason, muddy water coming out of the taps -"

"Where?"

"Well, it's all within a couple of miles -"

"Narrow it down. Does there seem to be a focal point? One place where most of the strange incidents are concentrated in or around?"

The cop clearly thought about it, scratching his head even as he remained in Bob's unwavering psychic grip. Now the utter silence of the place was starting to get to Angel, making his flesh crawl. Even the phones weren't ringing - how had Bob managed that? "Maybe the Sun Plaza Apartments - that's where most of the people falsely reported missing live."

"How long has this been going on with Sun Plaza?"

He shrugged. "About a week."

Bob nodded, and got him to tell him the address. He then stared Sanchez in the eyes, and said, "I'm not here. We never had this conversation." He then announced to the room at large, "Back to normal."

It was like a bubble of silence popped, and noise flooded in, an aggressive aural flood of angry detainees, ringing phones, talking cops, muttering drunks. Only the skinhead seemed to pause, brow furrowing, and he said to himself, "What the fuck am I doin'?"

So Bob must have made that "grow up" statement an order. Interesting.

Bob grabbed his arm and started pulling him after him out of the precinct house, as Sanchez blinked rapidly and looked around in confusion, as if he'd forgotten what he'd been doing. Angel almost felt bad for him.

"Did you freeze time?" Angel asked, as that was the only way that he could have stopped the phones.

"Just a little," Bob replied.

Angel yanked his arm free as soon as they were outside, and Bob turned to face him. "Wait a minute. Do you really think this place in Brentwood is the location of our Hellmouth?"

"I think it's our best bet. See, whoever's doing it, he's gotta know he'll need a bite to eat as soon as he's through. Dimensional travel is a good way to build an appetite - believe me, I know. It's the only time I'd even consider eating vegemite."

Suddenly Angel was longing for the surreal sense of time freezing around him. "A bite to eat? You mean …"

He nodded. "The people are food. I don't know if he'll actually snack on them physically, or just suck their souls out through their ears, but it's safe to say their being groomed for their eventual status as entrees. Actually, cross your fingers that's groomin's all that's been done. Depending on how powerful this guy is, they could already have started becoming snacks."

Oh shit. He hated fighting demons lords for just this very reason.

"We should really get the others before we check the place out," Bob continued, his voice deceptively casual. "Maybe I should go get Hel too, you know, just in case we need the extra muscle."

"You're expecting a fight." Not a question.

Bob grimaced, nodding almost imperceptibly. "He's been working on this for a week our time, maybe more. We have to assume the building's been infiltrated, the people compromised. And they're not going to look favorably on a god waltzing in to their area."

"Maybe you should stay back."

"Maybe I should. But if he does have proxies in the building, I may be your only shot against them."

Which was sad but true. Son of a bitch, what was it about Bob and no win situations?

Angel really began to wonder if he should relocate to another city, somewhere where Bob wasn't.

He suddenly wondered if he'd ever been to Albuquerque.


	3. Chapter 3

4

Before Tony left for Tokyo, Logan had called him and said he was probably going to need some discreet transport across the country for the time being. Tony put one of his smaller private planes and staff pilots at his disposal, probably due to guilt, but Logan wasn't such a saint that he was above using him for it - fuck no. Tony owed him that much at least.

As soon as he packed up all his things from Faith's place, which fit in a knapsack with room to spare, he stopped by a second hand bookshop, picked up a couple of paperbacks, and then stopped by a store to buy a pre-made sandwich and a six pack before showing up at the airport.

His pilot was a starkly handsome guy named Jaromir, who wore his straw blond hair in a spiky way and had an accent that put his hometown just northwest of Kiev. He spoke English fairly well, although it was clear he would have preferred Russian. Logan knew he could have conversed with him in his native tongue, but didn't, as he didn't feel like it.

He sat in the back of the Piper Cub, eating his sandwich, drinking his beer, and reading one of the books he bought. He was trying to forget the dream he had, but it was hard. He was a sniper in Canada, he knew that much, but that was hardly Canada in his dream, not if he was thinking about German soldiers. So where was he supposedly?

Were the Powers That Be still "paying him back"? He had no idea when such a thing started or stopped. Maybe they didn't either. Gods or not, they seemed a bit shaky on how things worked down here.

He'd already called Marcus before leaving Vancouver, and they'd arranged a place to meet, although Logan wasn't sure he'd ever heard of the place. Still, it was in downtown Toronto, so he was sure he could find it. He had some cash, so he simply caught a cab to take him there.

Logan had held out some hope that Corrigan's was a bar, but it turned out to be a folksy style diner, with a formica counter and an authentic layer of grease over everything. Marc was sitting in a window booth near the front, working on a plate of … something that was vaguely frightening looking. He looked up as he came in, and waved him over, not even pausing in his eating. As soon as Logan slid into the vinyl bench seat across from him, he nudged a glass of pale amber beer over towards him. "Want something to eat? I think the waitress is in love with me. Either that, or she thinks I'm gonna rob the place."

"Are you?"

"I'm still thinking about it."

He snickered, and took a swallow of the beer. That was one thing he liked about being in Canada - nobody looked at you funny if you had a beer for breakfast. They didn't assume you were an alcoholic, where in the States they would. Of course Logan figured he would be an alcoholic if only he could feel the booze. Technically, he supposed he still fit the definition. "Why are we meeting here exactly?"

"'Cause I was hungry," Marc said, eating a forkful of home fries. "Besides, this place does a great omelet with chives and Canadian Swiss cheese. That's gotta be the most peaceful and agreeable cheese on the planet. I bet it gets bullied by the American cheese and the Venezuelan beaver cheese."

Logan had to stifle a laugh, and shook his head in disbelief. "Do you have a Monty Python reference for every occasion?"

"A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat," he replied, and a man passing by on his way to the door did a slight double take. What, had he never heard Monty Python before?

As soon as he was sure he wasn't going to laugh, he asked, "So how goes the tailing?"

"I haven't gotten laid since … oh, you mean as in following, right?" He scowled at him for being a smart ass, but Marc just flashed him a toothy grin before picking up his laptop, which was apparently resting beside him on the seat. He booted it up, loaded up something, then turned it around and slid it across to him, careful to avoid hitting his beer.

"Holy shit," Logan gasped, as soon as he realized what he was looking at. The screen had Lafayette's daily routine in list form, giving approximate times, and illustrations of his routes to and from work, also with time notations. "Have you been stalking him?"

"Hey, you know I do detective shit from time to time. That's what this is. He lives alone in a small house on the outskirts of the city. He got divorced eight years ago, his wife Alice lives in Kingston, and he has two kids. His daughter, Stella, is a student at the University of Toronto majoring in English, and his son, Jack, is an assistant sound engineer for Nickelback."

He stared at him. "What?"

"I know! It's not bad enough he's a corrupt fuck, but he has a son partially responsible for foisting shitty music on the world. The guy's evil with a capital E."

The waitress, a rather weary looking bottle blonde woman who appeared to be in her late thirties but was probably about a decade younger, came over to the table, and he turned the laptop towards himself so she didn't see anything on the screen. She asked if he wanted anything, to which he responded in the negative, but Marc requested a top off on his orange juice, and another order of home fries. Logan scrolled through the Lafayette file, astounded at the detail he had amassed in a short day and a half. As soon as the waitress was gone, Logan muttered sarcastically, "So what did Lafayette buy at the store yesterday?"

"A bottle of low sodium soy sauce, Heinz ketchup, a loaf of wheat bread, a four pack of toilet paper, a box of Chablis, a copy of the Sporting News, a pack of double A batteries, a grapefruit, a can of Alpo, and a roll of Scotch tape."

Logan stared at him in disbelief. "You're not serious."

Marc reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a store receipt, which he handed over to him. "He left it at the check out counter. He paid in cash, so I guess it didn't matter, but it still seemed like a sloppy thing to do."

This was verging on creepy. "You followed him into the store?"

"I needed some beef jerky."

"You're a vegetarian."

"Well, you eat that crap, don't you?" And again he gave him that toothy, smart ass grin. Un-fucking-believable. Marc said he'd do reconnaissance on this guy, work out the best where and when to get him, and holy shit, he did.

"You weren't made?"

Marc considered that before slowly shaking his head. "No way, not by Lafayette. For a guy with a terrorism task force, he doesn't seem to look around himself too often. That's that damn Canadian complacency for you. Where's the paranoia? Where's the instinctive fear of your fellow man? Ya bunch of moose fucking pussies."

He couldn't hold it back any longer. Logan laughed, and Marc chuckled, clearly enjoying his mock Canadian prejudice. The waitress came back then, with the glass of orange juice and plate of home fries, and gave them a funny look as she put them down in front of Marc. She didn't exactly run from their table, but she retreated pretty quick. He wondered what was going through her mind, but he decided that it was probably a good thing he didn't know.

Logan scrolled through the files and let Marc continue with his breakfast - well, actually more like brunch, but whatever - and finally asked, "What do you think's our best bet?"

"Home after work. He lives a quarter mile from his nearest neighbor, separated by some windbreak firs, and his dog is an elderly German Shepherd with a bad hip. We cut his land line, and we'll have him before he can get through on his cell."

He stared at him over the top of the screen. "Promise me that you're not gonna turn on me someday, okay?"

"What? Now come on, I'm offended. Do I hafta burst into song now to convince you of my unwavering loyalty? Something from the Whitney Houston oeuvre? Oh wait, I'm in Canada. I guess I'd better make that from the back bacony Bryan Adams catalogue, huh?"

He glared at him, all the while trying not to laugh. "You're a dead man."

Marc's smart ass grin reappeared, and he basically looked like the Cheshire Cat wearing what looked like welding goggles. "Oh come on, be proud of your heritage, no matter how damn gay it is."

He hated him for doing it, but he couldn't help but laugh. Marc was always trying to make him laugh, and almost always succeeding. It wasn't fair at all.

* * *

They prepared for going to Sun Plaza by arming up, both physically and mystically. But it was difficult to say what kind of mystical protections they were going to need, since the type of threat was unknown.

So Giles went with a general one, an all around protection spell that wasn't nearly as good as a specific kind, but would have to do. It covered all of them, and he cemented that by smearing them on the backs of the hand with some kind of mixture that smelled like pitch and lemon balm. He warned them it might not hold, as he had no idea if they were up against a true demon god, his minions, or what exactly.

Angel and Giles both brought swords, Giles also carrying a small bag full of items for any emergency spells, while both Bren and Xander carried guns. Just to liven things up, Xander carried a flare gun as well, since a lot of demons didn't like fire, and Bren also had his compound crossbow, and probably a knife. Kier carried nothing, feeling that being a vampire would probably be enough to keep him alive, and besides, he intended to stick close to Helga. Naomi had no weapons, as she was pretty much a weapon, and if Bob was carrying any, he didn't say. Helga carried a gun, a machete (with its own belt sheath), a knife, and wore a pair of brass knuckles on her left hand, that Xander was the first to note was engraved with her name. "You enjoy being a scary person, don't you?" he asked.

Helga just shrugged. "It's a gift." Did she mean the brass knuckles or being scary? Oh hell, she could have meant both.

Bob agreed to hang back until they could get a measure of the situation, but as soon as they came onto the street, they began to rethink that strategy. First of all, it was eerily silent; it was an area as close to urban as Brentwood got, but there wasn't a single noise on the block. Not even a leaf or piece of garbage stirred as the wind came up, and no birds sang. It could have been an abandoned studio back lot for all the life on display; it seemed like a faulty replica of what a city block would seem like to aliens who didn't know any better. As they walked past an Acura parked up against the curb, Angel ran his finger experimentally over it - he came away with a thin film of dust on his fingertip. "Okay, this has gone from strange to creepy."

"Oh what, you just got there now?" Xander asked sarcastically. For some reason he was whispering, but come to think of it, if they talked at normal volume, they'd be the loudest thing in blocks.

A figure appeared at the other end of the block, not even bothering to hide themselves, and announced, "It becomes radio silent about a block and half away. It's like there's something physically absorbing the noise, but I can't see what."

He was wearing all black, but that voice, smooth and betraying a light, unusual accent, one that was part upper class British and part middle class Indonesian, was immediately identifiable. "Saddiq?" Angel asked curiously.

"Sid!" Bren exclaimed - or maybe he just said it. But it sounded loud in all this silence. "Dude, what are you doing here?" Angel noted that both he and Bren turned to look at Bob at the same time.

Bob shrugged with his hands, a gesture that clearly said _"What are you going to do?" _"I said we needed muscle, and let's face it, he's good."

"And if it's anything, I was bored," Saddiq admitted, coming over to their group. His hair was a bit scruffier than it had been the last time he saw it, but Saddiq otherwise looked exactly the same, right down to his outfit. It was all the X-Men leather, the jacket open to show the black tank top he wore underneath. "I've been trying to figure out what I want independent of my … programming, but I'm really not sure how to get beyond it, or where the dividing line is. Logan will probably be disappointed in me, but … all I could figure out was I enjoyed being alone."

"So who's he, the Amazing Leather Boy?" Xander asked.

"This is Saddiq," Bob said, making the formal introductions. "He's the X-Man known as Saracen. Saddiq, this is Xander, also known as the resident smart ass."

Xander scowled at Bob for that, but quickly looked back at Saddiq with an easy smile, trying to be friendly. "Oh, so you're a mutant, huh? What can you do?"

"My skin is impenetrable to everything but adamantium. I take it you're not a mutant?"

"No, I'm just a Human. I mean a normal Human."

Saddiq nodded, and may have attempted a smile, but it fell into a simple, non-committing grim line. He looked directly at Angel, and asked, "Why is he here?"

"Hey!" Xander protested.

"I have to get you under the protection spell," Giles said, handing a slightly baffled Kier his bag of magical accoutrements. Well, Kier was closest to him, and had no weapons, so what else did he have to deal with?

"I don't need it," Saddiq replied.

"Yes, you do," Giles insisted gently but firmly, in that tone of voice that brooked no arguments. "You may be hard to hurt under normal circumstances, but when you're dealing with the supernatural, you can be as vulnerable as everyone else. Even Logan has nearly been killed by it several times, and you know how hard he is to hurt."

Saddiq sighed, momentarily looking as if he might disagree, but the way his shoulders sagged beneath his coat signaled surrender. There was still something in Saddiq that couldn't help but acquiesce to the demands of a male authority figure. More vestigial traces of his programming.

"Why don't you give Xander your coat?" Bob said to Saddiq. "He's the normal Human here, after all. He might need it." Although Bob made it sound like a friendly suggestion, Angel somehow doubted it was.

"Why would I need his coat?" Xander cracked. "We goin' to Sturges?"

"There's a type of Kevlar under the leather," Saddiq said, taking off the jacket. "It's resistant to many projectiles and cushions some impacts."

"Oh. It's still kind of kinky."

"The X-Men are a kinky lot," Bob interjected cheerfully.

Both Bren and Saddiq gave Bob a type of look that seemed to say _"What are you on?", _but neither of them actually said it. Sid handed Xander his coat, and Giles motioned Sid over, so he could put the mark on his hand. Although Xander grimaced like he didn't know why he was doing this, he reluctantly put it on.

Once the whole group was set (Sid brought no weapons, but again, he was one, so why would he need one), they approached Sun Plaza, keeping an eye out for any demon mark, or any sign there were wards or guardians, something to alert the tenants of newcomers. They didn't see or feel anything, but Bob didn't seem wholly convinced there was nothing there, which Angel found worrisome.

Another thing that was instantly noticeable was there were no lights on in the building - none. There didn't appear to be any lights on up and down the block. "Is the electricity still on?" Angel wondered.

He was asking Naomi, who knew that. She simply glanced down at the pavement, and reported, "The electricity's still flowing, yes. I don't know why we can't see it."

Xander stared at her in disbelief. "You … feel electricity?" She simply nodded. "Do you ever have to pay your electricity bills?" he added curiously.

She shrugged. "In theory, no."

"Oh fuck me raw," Bob gasped, staring up at the apartment building. It was a ten story building with a restored brick edifice - always dangerous in earthquake country - although the white trim on the window frames were peeling, indicating that the look of retro neglect wasn't completely a fashion statement. The dark, rectangular windows were like the flat, lifeless eyes of a corpse. There was a metal core door leading into the building, operated by one of those security systems that required someone inside to buzz you in, and over the top of the doorframe was a bolted on sign in faux adobe, reading "Sun Plaza" in red and orange letters, the background decorated with a pseudo Aztec pattern. It looked like a sad apartment building, like one where actors who so far could only get work as waiters were forced to live until they couldn't even meet this rent bill. "I know there's people in there, but I can't hear them."

"None of us can hear anything," Kier stupidly pointed out.

Bob was looking up at the building as if he was trying to see through it, his eyes starting to glow a faint but obvious blue in the dark. "Not with my ears, mate. People are open books to me, I hear them around me all the time, I have to work to keep them out. But I'm reaching out now, I'm kicking open the doors, and I'm gettin' nothing, just all of you."

Xander suddenly stiffened, as if kicked in the ass. "You're hearing our thoughts? _Now_?"

Bob made a vague waving gesture of his hand, one of dismissal. "Kiddo, I don't care. I should be hearing more, much more, but it's like I'm hitting a … _wall_ of static."

He and Giles exchanged a grim look before Giles asked, "Which means what?"

Bob was scowling at the bricks, as if trying to telekinetically move them, but he glanced down at the walk and shook his head, his jaw tensing. "It means this is seriously bad. No door is closed to me, and I shouldn't be blocked psychically by anything, save for demons specifically made to kill gods, or another god."

Angel grabbed his arm, made Bob look at him. His eyes burned like fire and he had to squint to look at him. "Does that mean another god is here?"

Bob must have realized that he had his power dialed up too much, because the light in his eyes faded to a tolerable level. "No. I'd have gotten more than static; something would have hit back."

"So what's in there?" Giles asked.

Bob had to think about it for a long moment. "I don't think it's just guardian demons; I'm sensing Humans. It's possible that the god has enough pull on this plane, that the dimensional layer is so thin, that he's mentally controlling these people. Either that, or the people are technically brain dead, but their corpses animated."

"By the god," Angel said, just to be sure he was on the same page.

Bob nodded, frowning slightly.

"So this is either Stepford Central or Zombieville?" Xander asked, in his own inimitable way. "This sucks."

"Sucks worse to be them," Helga opined. She had a point.

Clearly this was a bad situation, but they had to go in; they had to know how much of a Hellmouth had been opened, and what exactly they were dealing with.

Since Bob didn't want to use his powers and tip their hand too early, Naomi opened the door by manipulating the energy feed to the security system, and they went in two by two, since the door was too small to allow them in all at once. Angel went in with Giles first, and they were soon followed by Naomi and Bren and Sid and Xander, with Bob and Helga close behind. Kier brought up the rear, as he seemed perfectly content to do just that.

The front corridor was narrow, with a collection of far more narrow metal mailboxes off to the immediate right, and a stairwell going off to the left. The sense that something was wrong was so immediate and so potent he felt his vampire side emerge almost instantaneously. The building reeked of heat and meat, of hot concrete and boiled rust, and his skin felt like it was trying to crawl off his shoulder blades and slink back towards the door.

"What's that smell?" Xander whispered.

There were some apartment doors down the hall, and while the corridor itself was dark, there was light bleeding out from underneath every single door. So yes, the electricity was definitely on, but for some reason it couldn't escape the building.

Although logic might tell you a Hellmouth or any other kind of dimensional breach would be on the ground floor, a dimensional rift could appear absolutely anywhere; it didn't obey rules of logic or gravity. He could sense it - or something like it - somewhere above them. He looked at Giles, motioned upstairs with a jerk of his head, and then went on up the stairs. Everyone followed.

They tried to be as quiet as possible, but the stairway creaked and groaned underfoot, and besides, whoever was in control of this place had to know they were here. They _had_ to. So why weren't they reacting?

They were in the stairwell of the second floor, leading up to the third, when they saw the graffiti written on the wall, in blood dried brown. It didn't look like a language at all, just slightly geometric squiggles, but Giles said, "What tongue is that? It looks vaguely Irragani."

Bob edged closer for a better look. "It's Etrikan. It says '_I hate you all'_."

"Who uses Etrikan?" Angel wondered, his skin still itching like he had a thousand burrowing ants beneath his skin.

Bob shook his head. "Too many of the old guard. This isn't a help."

"Where is everyone?" Saddiq asked, continuing to look up and down the dark hall. "This isn't right."

"No kidding," Helga commented sarcastically.

Sid scowled at her, then looked towards him, brow furrowing in concern. "I'm never one to suggest this, but perhaps a tactical retreat is in order."

Bren, in his spiky Brachen form, looked back at him in utter shock. "You think things are that bad?"

Sid nodded, looking so grave his dark eyes were shadowy holes in his face. "I think this is a trap. We should leave before it's sprung."

"I think getting in was the easy part," Bob said ominously. "Getting out is going to be the hard part."

Angel would have asked him what he meant, but he thought he knew already. They did get in rather easily, with absolutely no resistance. It could have meant they were expected; it could have also meant they were happy to have people wander in, as there was no chance they were walking out.

Although it probably would have been a smart thing to turn around and attempt to leave, they had gone too far to walk away now. Even Sid had to agree to that, as much as his instincts were telling him this was bad.

All the corridors were dark, with light only visible limning the doors, all of which were tightly shut. There was no noise inside the building, save for the stairs creaking beneath their steps, and the feeling that his skin was going to crawl off and cower beneath the stairwell was getting worse. Bob started singing softly under his breath, maybe to cut the eerie silence. "You don't ask much of me now, you don't belong here, but you'll never leave now -"

As soon as they hit the seventh floor riser, Angel found his head filled with bees.

Or at least it seemed like it. He grabbed his head, grimacing against the constant buzzing that seemed to make his back teeth vibrate, and he realized it was the dimensional rift. Dru used to say they "talked" to her, but he could now see how she may have gotten confused. It wasn't speech or any coherent noise; it was simply the sound of dimensional layers being torn away, a rending of reality that shouldn't make a sound, but somehow did. He didn't know if anyone else heard it.

There was more Etrikan writing on the corridor walls, in blood dried and baked to a rusty reddish brown, and Bob began interpreting it for everyone else. "The word hate is repeated over and over again, as is the phrase _"I'll fuck your head off_"."

"Put in that context, it doesn't sound so fun," Helga noted.

"Guys," Sid said, and there was a great deal of warning in his voice.

They all looked towards him, and then beyond at what he was looking at.

Down on the sixth floor riser was a large group of people, maybe a dozen, all looking up at them silently. Their eyes were bleeding, their pupils turned crimson and trails like tear tracks sliding down their cheeks, making it look like they were wearing war paint. They were an assortment of ages, from a woman in her sixties to a boy about seven, but most were in the middle, in their twenties or thirties. They said nothing, and didn't move from the riser - they simply stared up at them with their bleeding eyes, blood dribbling down their faces and making a soft sound as it impacted with the floor.

"Are they still alive?" Angel asked Bob. If they were, if there was some way to save them, they couldn't fight to kill them. But if it was too late, if they were gone, then there was nothing to hold them back.

"I - I'm not sure," Bob said, frustration giving his voice an edge.

A scuffing noise made Angel look up, and it seemed the hallway of the seventh floor was suddenly full of people, at least a dozen, and they too had bleeding eyes. But mixed in with them were other people who seemed to have had skin grown over their eyes, hiding the sockets, rendering the place where their eyes should have been a smooth, empty indent in their faces. There seemed to be a hint of movement beneath the new skin, suggesting there were eyes somewhere lost beneath the flesh.

No one said anything; they didn't even come closer. They just stood there, waiting, having cut off both forward momentum and retreat. _What_ were they waiting for?

"What the hell's happened to these people?" Sid asked, sounding vaguely appalled.

No one had an answer for him. No one even ventured a guess.

"Who's your leader?" Bob demanded, talking to the group of people in the corridor. "Who do you answer to?"

As if by way of answer, a huge blue Charunai stormed through the crowd, and tackled Bob. "Shit!" he cursed, as both he and the guardian demon crashed through the stair railing and went falling through the air down the stairwell. Helga lunged to grab him and missed, Sid grabbing her tail and holding her the only thing keeping her from plunging over the side with them.

"Here they come!" Giles shouted, pulling away their attention.

What had they been waiting for? They were waiting for the god to be taken care of. Now that he had, they were free to attack.

And they did.


	4. Chapter 4

They fought like people possessed, theoretically if not precisely. They swarmed up and down the staircase, where they were all sandwiched in, but Giles was able to bark out a spell that repelled the group swarming down the stairs back up, and Naomi shot out enough electricity to drive those coming up the stairwell back down. It gave them a moment of breathing space but no more before they came at them again, hands like claws, grasping and rending, snapping at them with their teeth, trying to hurt them by any means necessary. It was pure insanity, but clearly they meant to hurt them, to kill them, and Angel made a decision.

"Hit 'em with all you got," he shouted, pulling out his sword. "Stay alive!"

As much as he could tell, they were mindless drones, vessels for something else, something that seemed to attack their eyes. He couldn't hear their hearts beating, in spite of the blood dripping from their faces.

While he still used his sword to simply hack and wound, kicking and punching them down wherever possible, Helga, at the other end of the stairs, was simply chopping open heads and necks with her machete, occasionally snagging a person with her tail and tossing them over the side, down the stairwell. Sid was right behind her, breaking legs with well placed kicks, snapping necks with single twists. He told the ones with broken legs to stay down and stop resisting further, but it didn't seem like they were listening to him.

Some of the people on the upper floors had weapons, although makeshift ones: baseball bats, kitchen knives, even a golf club or two. He had little problem disarming them, but someone buried a butcher knife deep into his upper arm, and someone else hit him hard on the back of the head with a baseball bat before Giles chopped it out of the owner's hand with his sword. Stumbling from the blow, a man grabbed Angel and bit him hard enough on the shoulder to break the skin, tear his shirt. He screamed and hit him on the top of the head with the haft of the sword, making him fall away. Holy shit, what was wrong with these people?

He fought his way down the hall, heading towards the constant buzzing of the dimensional rift, and blood splashed on his face as he slashed through the angry, eyeless mob. He licked his lips, realized he was hungry, but better yet, he wanted to paint this hall with their miserable blood. These stupid fucks, didn't they realize they were trying to save their souls if it was too late to save their lives? And everyone else's lives too. They were idiots! Fucking idiots who deserved to die, who deserved to get their souls eaten by some damn demon lord who didn't have the sense to open up a rift in a _good_ location.

He loathed them more than almost anything in his life, and that was saying something. He wanted them to burn, he wanted to rip them apart with his bare hands and bathe in their blood. He wanted to -

_-What the fuck was he thinking!_

He stopped where he was, trying to get a grip on the sudden, inexplicable rage that seemed to pound through his head, a hate that made his injuries throb. _Hate. _

Angel backed up towards the stairwell, shouldering his way through the people, who continued to try and hurt him by any means available. He slashed weakly with his sword, just enough to clear a space, and shouted to the others, "The closer we get, the more it taints us! Giles, we need a spell -"

Giles wheeled towards him, and he saw his face for only a moment before his sword arced down towards him. It was contorted in rage, lips skinned back to the teeth, his face splattered with blood and his sword dripping with gore. He didn't say anything, but he didn't have to.

Angel knew it was too late as the sword cut through the air.

5

Marc found a nice, hidden place to park and they walked in, careful to be quiet and stay out of the open. Lafayette's house was smaller and more non-descript than he had thought it would be, just a split level painted marine blue with white trim, the roof quaintly shingled and peaked, a perfect expanse of lawn broken up only by small islands of shrubs and trees, explosions of flowers adding color to the otherwise unrelenting green. He expected the dog to start barking as they crossed the lawn, but he didn't hear it. It wasn't outside either.

Something about this scenario struck him as wrong, so he wasn't overly surprised when the front door opened as they neared the porch. Although Marc's hand went instantly to his gun, Lafayette was just leaning in the open doorway, either drunkenly or wearily (perhaps both), in khakis and a button down white shirt open at the collar, showing a bit of the undershirt he wore beneath. "Somehow I expected something flashier," Lafayette said. His right hand was empty; in his left, he held a half empty glass of scotch.

He exchanged a wary look with Marc. He hadn't sensed or smelled anyone, and certainly Marc hadn't seen one. If it was a trap, it was a damn good one. "You've been expecting me," Logan said. It may have sounded like a question, but it wasn't.

Lafayette shrugged. "They wanted me to leave, but, you know, fuck it. I don't like cutting and running. Don't worry, it's not a trap - I'm not even supposed to be here. Want a drink?"

He didn't seem to be lying, but then again, he seemed to be a little drunk. That could make judging veracity difficult, because a drunk always thought they were being honest. "Who's they?"

He snorted a weak laugh. "Oh, come on - do you even have to ask?" He left the door open as he retreated farther into his house.

They followed, not convinced that it was all that safe, but they'd come this far, so how could they turn back now?

The inside of Lafayette's house looked like the kind of home you'd find in an upscale catalogue for furnishings, not cluttered but certainly expensively tasteful, with white walls and pale blue accents as background for surfaces of ash blond wood. The living room, with its homey overstuffed sofa and ships in bottles on the mantelpiece, looked as if it had been professionally cleaned recently. He probably had a maid.

Lafayette flopped on the sofa, and gestured with his drink. "Help yourself to the bar. Or anything, really. I don't care."

Marc looked around the room suspiciously, glancing through the archways, while Logan just sat on a cushion stuffed wicker chair across from the sofa, and glared at Lafayette. "You knew. Why lie to me?"

"I didn't lie -"

"Don't bullshit me."

"I told you what I could tell you. You have to understand that I'm not really a part of this, I just know what I've heard or been told."

"Of course, you were following orders, the excuse of the chickenshit," he sneered. "Did the Organization send me after Black Fire?"

"I think it was a mutual desire."

He grunted. "You all wanted to use me."

Lafayette took a swig of his drink, nearly draining the glass. "You have skills, Logan, ones that are harder to find than you'd think."

He heard Marc doing a sweep of the house, walking around, checking out closets and other rooms, searching for people who may have been hiding. But if his sense of smell could be trusted, the maid was the only other person Lafayette had had in his house for a while. "Yeah, I know, my fucking healing factor. Do you know what Control did to me?"

"Your healing factor was only one mark in your favor," he claimed, slumping further into the couch. "And by Control I guess you mean Carter. I know some of what he did to you, but not all. We drifted away, and he got … militant."

"That's not the point. The point is you knew more about me than you ever let on."

He looked at him wearily, the alcohol aging him, making him look just this side of broken. "I know you served your country with distinction, Logan. I also know you were royally screwed over by said country. "

"Why?"

Lafayette finished off his drink before he answered, putting his empty glass on his blond wood coffee table, which had been sanded and polished to such a high gloss it almost looked like amber. "Carter liked to claim that there would be a mutant arms race, that as mutants grew to be more known outside of the scientific communities, countries would stockpile them like weapons. He wanted to make sure the countries of the West had the biggest and best stock standing by to take out anything someone in Russia or Saudi Arabia or Nicaragua could amass. He convinced a lot of the right people."

"We're not weapons - we're people."

"Yes, I know. But he preferred to think of you as weapons. It made it easier to excuse whatever was done to your kind, because it wasn't hurting a person, it was simply honing a weapon that could tip the balance of power, keep democracy thriving for future generations. You were one of the first mutants he knew of, and you were a natural. There were people in the Canadian government who were more than happy to have you turned over to them. "

Logan wished he was surprised to hear that, but he wasn't. Betrayal was a constant in his life. "Why?"

"Well, there was the mutant business, but only a handful of people knew about that. The truth was, you made people nervous. You were highly decorated, and you were great at your job; you were everything they could have asked for in an operative. You could improvise even under high stress situations, and you got the job done, no matter how bad it went. You usually found some way to see things through. Which was fine on its own … but you were quiet, you kept to yourself, you didn't complain a lot, but you weren't very forthcoming either. You survived a lot of things you shouldn't have, and only the chosen few who knew you were a mutant knew why. "

"What an interesting turn of phrase," Marc said, returning to the living room. He had a gun out, but it was aimed down at the floor, an implied threat as opposed to a direct one. "_You survived a lot of things you shouldn't have_. Some people wanted him dead, didn't they?"

Lafayette's eyes lazily met Marc's, and Logan wondered how long he'd been waiting for them, drinking his scotch. He seemed to weigh his potential responses carefully before committing to any of them. "It's quite possible. When you're a professional troubleshooter who's long lived, you learn much, some things that certain people want to make sure is never public knowledge."

Marc leaned on the back of his chair and gave him a faint smack on the shoulder. "How about that, bud? They had to fuck with your head 'cause you knew too much. Now you can brag to the Boy Scout."

He knew Marc was just trying to be funny, but there was no humor in this that Logan could see. "Tell me everything you know about me."

Lafayette shrugged helplessly. "I don't know that much about you, Logan. I'm not in the Organization, I just know what they've told me and what I've heard from second hand sources. I just know you were an agent for the government for many years, in many capacities, and you were considered to be very good, although perhaps a tad … unstable."

"Unstable?" he demanded. But in retrospect Logan didn't know why, because he really didn't want to know.

Lafayette seemed reluctant to tell him. "You didn't always follow orders to the exact word. It was rumored - rumored mind you; I have no idea if this was true - that you once shot one of your own men because he did something you didn't like. He said he was just following protocol, but you claimed it was torture, and some people said you just had personal issues with the man. Either way, it was a blemish on your record. That of course doesn't exist anymore, so there's no way to verify it in any way."

"If he shot a guy, he had a damn good reason for it," Marc insisted angrily. Logan wished he had that much confidence in himself.

Lafayette nodded, but it seemed to be a placating gesture. He was probably more wary of Marc because he didn't know what to expect from him; he was a wild card, and worse yet, a wild card with a gun. "I would never presume to say otherwise. I did try and find some information that might be helpful to you, but I didn't have a lot of luck. I did find this, though. " He dug in his pants pocket, and Logan felt Marc tense behind him, surely ready to wing him if he tried anything. But all he pulled out of his pocket was a large pink sticky note, and he leaned across the elegant coffee table to hand it to him. "There's every indication he knew you back then. Maybe he can give you something I can't."

Logan took the sticky and scanned it, expecting the blandness he got. It was simply a name that meant nothing to him - Steven Samms - and an address that put him in an obscure corner of Maine. "Who the hell is this?"

"He's the only other living member of some op called Operation: Nightfall in the '40's. A cooperate intelligence effort between several countries that's rumored to be where the idea of the Organization was born."

"The '40's?" Marc repeated, sounding surprised. "Whoa, ain't that a blast from the past?"

"You were an exceptional agent, and you proved you still are with that Black Fire nonsense," Lafayette went on, his vowels slurring slightly at the edges. "I just wanted you to come back and work for us, for J2, that's all. I had no sinister intent, Logan. I just thought you belonged home, with your country, with your true people - the espionage community. So you're a mutant. So fucking what? It's politicians who get worked up about shit like that."

Logan was hardly hearing him, as he had recognized the name Nightfall: World War Two. He was sure that everyone involved in it, besides him, was dead by now.

He suddenly wondered if the dream he'd had was, in a strange way, prophetic.

* * *

Angel got his sword up as Giles's blade came slashing down, and only because he had a speed above Human was he able to deflect it. Just barely, actually - the tip of Giles's sword cut a slice down his cheek, just underneath his left eye. He felt the sword slice his skin, skid across bone.

He stumbled back, trying to parry Giles's sword out of his hand, but he was unable to do it. Crazed hatred had given Giles almost supernatural strength, and his eyes seemed to blaze with rage. He brought his sword up again for another hack, but Angel had had enough time to recover, and met his slash with one of his own, the sound of steel meeting steel ringing through the hall. "Jesus, Giles, think!" he snapped. "It's this place! The madness, it's contagious! The closer we get to it -"

"Do you think I've ever forgiven you, you monster?" he snarled, his slashes making up in speed for what they lacked in finesse.

The closer Angel got to the rift, the more the hate rose up in him, volcanic and nearly impossible to ignore. With Giles's moves becoming so sloppy, it was easy for him to see how he could kill him, slice him open like melon, chop his head off in a single smooth blow. And the farther he was forced back, the more overwhelming these thoughts became, the more hard to resist.

Finally he kicked Giles in the stomach, making him stumble back, and he slashed the sword close enough to him to rip his shirt across the sleeve - if Giles had been a half an inch closer, he'd have hacked his arm off. And worse yet, Angel was sure he wouldn't have felt bad about it. "Would you fucking listen to me, you washed up old hack! We have to get outta here before we all kill each other!"

Giles seemed to recover his breath, but he was just raising his arm to take up the fight again when Xander shoved him brutally aside. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded, clearly aghast.

You knew things were really fucked up when Xander seemed to be the sane one. Angel continued wrestling down his inexplicable rage, glad for the moment's peace, when Xander glared at him with open, raw rage. "He's too good of a swordfighter to kill that way," Xander said, pulling out his gun.

Oh shit.

He was caught off guard and distracted, so Xander was able to fire before Angel slapped the gun out of his hand, and he took the bullet almost point blank in the chest. It was like getting hit with a sledgehammer, the impact reverberating through his as it shattered bones and tore through muscles before exiting out his back, and while there was no way in hell it would kill him, it fucking hurt, and Angel staggered back, grabbing the gaping hole in his chest. He just had to have his gun loaded with hollow points, didn't he?

He leaned against the railing, trying to will himself to drop his sword so he didn't run that fucking bastard Xander through with it, when Giles blindsided Xander with a punch. "He's mine, you stupid wanker. Go back to your parent's basement - this is a job for a _man_."

Xander staggered back a couple of steps, but Giles just didn't have enough behind the punch to phase him. He swiveled his head around to glare at Giles, his eyes narrowing to slits. "You ruined my life, you wasted old man. I know why the Watchers fucking fired your ass." He threw a punch that Giles saw coming and blocked with a forearm, but that was just a ruse, and he quickly delivered a rabbit punch to Giles's gut with a low, hard left. Giles instantly doubled over, and Xander drove his knee right into his face, sending him sprawling. But as soon as Xander turned towards Angel, hands balled into fist, Giles kicked out from his position on the floor and caught Xander in the side of the knee, making him stumble and fall on his ass.

Angel couldn't help but notice that now that they were fighting each other, the tenants had backed off and seemed to be watching them, as if they had suddenly become their entertainment.

He could see that Helga and Sid had moved down to the lower riser, where they were being swamped by possessed people, and yet still fighting a pathway clear; being farther away, and also being people wholly dedicated to destruction, the urge to turn on each other hadn't yet occurred to them yet, and probably wouldn't the farther away they got. The funny thing was, if Angel had been asked ahead of time who was most likely to survive a massacre, Hel and Sid would have been the pair he'd have bet on. Naomi had been nailed by a flying object, judging from the gash on her forehead and the fact that she was sitting down on the stairs, but Bren and Kier were protecting her from either side, and neither had moved far enough up the staircase to have been affected. So it only affected those that were on the same floor as the rift. It was probably significant, but Angel wasn't sure why at the moment.

The wound in his chest and back wasn't healing, it was simply throbbing like a phantom heart, and it was really pissing him off. Giles and Xander were still brawling - Giles accused Xander of never being anything but a loser, and Xander accused him of "warping" Willow - and Angel took the opportunity to cold cock Xander with a swift right upper cut. "Shoot me, will you," he growled, and before Xander could slump to the floor he grabbed him and shoved him down the stairs. He collided with Bren, who fell over Naomi and stumbled into Kier, and they all ended up in a big heap near the bottom. He had no idea if they were all hurt or not.

Giles was on the floor, bleeding from the mouth and growing a nasty looking shiner, and his eyes had a half-conscious glaze that killed some of the rage. Xander may have been only a Human and a pretty piss poor one at that, but he did work as a construction worker, so he had functioning muscle, and he was decades younger than poor Rupert. Experience wasn't going to save him from an angry young man. Or an angry old vampire.

Angel angled the tip of his sword right underneath Giles's tender chin, resting it against his jugular vein. Giles froze, aware of how bad that was. "If you were any kind of spell slinger at all, you could have saved your own life," he spat derisively. Old fool - this was all his fault. If he had just been better, a true wizard, maybe he wouldn't have had to die like this. But no, he had to be a failure …

"You're dead," a voice suddenly shouted, and Angel felt a shiver of power run through him. He looked over his shoulder to see all the possessed people on the riser below, the ones Helga and Sid had been plowing their way through like humanoid bulldozers, all collapse, felled like stalks of wheat before a scythe. Bob was among them now, blue blood streaking his face, his eyes glowing with that energy too painful to look at.

Some of the spectators who'd been watching Xander and Giles fight collapsed, caught by that energy that Angel had felt graze him, but not all of them. Bob would have had to get closer, expend more energy to get them, and they retreated into the shadows to avoid his gaze.

"To me!" Bob exclaimed, although it wasn't actually a statement. It was a command, in that voice that was purely inhuman, the one he could feel move through him like a lightning bolt, and before he even knew what he was doing, he had helped Giles to his feet and started down the stairs, towards Bob. He didn't actually want to go, his mind was rebelling, but Angel's body wasn't listening to him anymore - it was obeying the command of a god, one that simply couldn't be ignored, one he wasn't strong enough to fight.

There was a vibration moving through the building, a pounding, and Angel belatedly realized it was the Charunai racing up the stairs, his weight and force shaking the entire stairwell, as Bob must have decided escaping was a better option than fighting. After all, if he killed him, he'd have simply created two Charunai to deal with.

They all responded, all grouping on the lower riser, all bloodied and beaten but at least still alive, and the Charunai was closing in on them. Angel had time to wonder what Bob's plan was when the world seemed to turn inside out, and they were all thrown into utter darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

Reality snapped into focus around them, and they all hit the floor hard, sprawling on hard wood that probably needed a bit of dusting.

The music and the smell alone told Angel they were in the Way Station. Before he could shove himself up from the floor and have a look around - god, every injury he had hurt, and he hadn't realized until this moment how injured he was - Bob shouted, "Out!" It was another command in that god voice, and the word had barely faded when Angel noticed they were all alone in the bar, save for Lia. Angel wished _he _could do that, say one thing and have everyone instantly obey.

Bob was the only one of them standing, even though his face was bloody, and his "Me - The Other White Meat" t-shirt was torn and half blue with his blood. He went over to the bar, slumped on a stool, and Lia put one of those big cans of Australian beer in front of him. "That bad?" she asked, although she didn't sound all that concerned. He nodded, cracked open the beer, and shotgunned it, drinking the whole thing without taking a breath.

Helga was the first to her feet, with Sid right behind her. They were both bloody, but almost none of the blood on them was their own. "You're really impressive, kid," she told him. "So how old are you?"

"Twenty. Why?"

Her tail snaked around his waist, and pulled him closer to her as she gave him a smile that was part seductive, part predatory. "'Cause I wanted to make sure you were legal."

Sid stared at her, clearly startled, and it was almost funny. A horde of bloody eyed people trying to rip him to pieces didn't scare him, but Helga? Yeah. It actually made sense, though - Helga could be pretty scary, especially if she thought you were her type.

Bob sighed loudly as he slammed the empty beer can down, and scrubbed a hand through his bloody hair. Bren got up and helped Naomi to her feet, as Kier got up rubbing his head, and Xander, still flat out on the floor, complained, "I think I dislocated my shoulder. Hey, anybody gonna tell me what the _fuck_ just happened?"

"I think the technical term for it is we got our asses kicked," Naomi replied, sitting on the edge of a nearby table.

He could hear Bob singing along under his breath with the Porcupine Tree song coming from the jukebox. "A fire to feed, a belt to bleed, strip the soul, kill them all …"

"I don't think we expected the entire populace of the building to attack us as one," Sid pointed out, trying very delicately to extricate himself from Helga's grip without offending her.

"We're dealing with a god of rage," Bob said suddenly, turning around on the stool to face them. He wiped blood off his face with the back of his hand. "He's let in just enough of his dimension to poison everyone near by. It will get worse the bigger the rift gets."

Angel sat up, arms wrapped around the bullet hole in his chest, even though it threatened to open up the knife wound in his shoulder. Shit, he took some damage - good thing he was already dead. "But the police said they'd been there, to check out the missing persons report. They didn't seem affected."

"No, but they wouldn't be. Even a mad god could figure out you don't want to alert authority figures to a problem, not until you're ready to handle them all. He probably has one or two people not as bad as the others, to act as spokespeople."

"On a scale of one to ten, how fucked are we?" Kier wondered.

"I'd say eleven," Bren opined.

Giles sat up with a pained groan, rubbing his jaw. "I think I lost a tooth."

Naomi snorted a dark laugh. "I think we've all lost bits."

"We barely got out of there," Bob said, seemingly apropos of nothing. "He was trying to block my teleport, he just wasn't strong enough yet."

That was even worse news. If he was almost strong enough to resist Bob, he was strong enough to defeat them. So where did that leave them?

Sid managed to extricate himself delicately from Helga, and helped Xander, still wearing his X-Men jacket, up to his feet. It looked like Xander had a nascent black eye and a nasty, swelling bruise on the right side of his jaw. "You said you thought your shoulder was dislocated?" Sid asked him. " Which one?"

"My left. Wh-" Sid didn't even give him time to finish the question. He grabbed his left arm, straightened it, and did something that seemed like a combination push/pull. Xander screamed incoherently, and as soon as Sid let him go, he staggered back away from him, so violently he banged into a table and nearly tipped it over. "Dude, what the fuck..!" Xander exclaimed, his eyes watering from the pain. But then he looked down at his left hand, which he moved experimentally. "Oh. Shit, couldn't you have warned me before you did that?"

"It wouldn't have helped," Sid claimed. It sounded like he was speaking from experience.

Xander looked at his hand, still flexing it, then asked with a combination of wonderment and fear, "What the hell do they teach you at that mutant school?"

"I think we all need a drink," Bob told Lia. "A strong one."

She gave him a haughty look, eyebrows raise imperiously. "And I suppose you expect me to get them?"

"If you wouldn't mind."

She cursed under her breath and began slamming glasses and bottles around, apparently forgetting that she was a bartender. Helga slid on the stool beside Bob, her tail giving him a playful slap on the butt at the same time. "So, tiger, what's our next move?"

Everyone looked at Bob, since it was a good question and he was their de facto leader for the moment, since gods were Bob's territory.

They ended up staring at Bob for a very long time.

6

Since Lafayette was so bombed, Logan couldn't tell how truthful he was being. Conversely, his usefulness was minimal. Logan decided that he wanted to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.

Marc seemed reluctant to just leave him, because as drunk as he was, he was afraid that he'd report them to a hit squad. Not that they couldn't handle it, but they hadn't completely decided on a plan of action yet. So Logan let Marc go ahead and temporarily paralyze Lafayette by grabbing him with an ungloved hand and just sinking in his fingernails for a second. He wasn't sure Lafayette, as tanked as he was, even noticed.

They didn't bother to talk until they got back to the car and started driving away. "So where to?" Marc asked, as he continued to glance in the rearview mirror. Well, pursuit could happen at any time, although it looked clear to Logan. "Maine?"

"That would seem to be the most logical choice," he admitted, with little enthusiasm.

Marc gave him a suspicious sidelong glance. "What's wrong? You think it's a trap?"

"That, or it's just what he says it is. I'm not sure which is worse." Logan realized he'd come to a personal crossroads - namely, he wasn't sure he wanted to know any more about his past. There were some things he was sure to never know, because the people who wanted them suppressed made sure every bit of that information was gone, right down to the people who knew about it. It was a rigged deck, a battle he couldn't win, and he didn't even know why he was trying anymore. He wasn't happy with bits and pieces of information, questions without answers, but that was all he had. If he wasn't happy with mere fragments, then it was time for him to give it a rest.

"Wow. You really don't want to know who you used to be?"

He thought about it as he looked out the window at the scenery gliding by. The quiet, rural outskirts were slowly giving way to suburban housing projects and strip malls that came to announce the city of Toronto on the horizon. Should he admit it to him? Oh hell - if he couldn't talk to Marc, who _could_ he talk to? "Every time I find something out about me, I don't wanna know it. I'm not sure any good can come of this."

He snorted. "You kiddin' me? You killed Nazis. Ain't nothing bad in that."

"There could be behind the scenes things that I don't want to know. "

"So you'd rather not know, is that what you're saying?"

He sighed and shook his head. "I don't know."

"Uh huh. If we didn't go now, are you telling me you could live with it? That the not knowing won't drive you crazy?"

Logan smashed his head back against the seat, wanting to kick out, but he was afraid he might break something and this car was only a rental. Marc would probably paralyze him if he lost his security deposit. "I hate this, man. I fucking _hate_ this."

"You should. You were used, squeezed dry, and thrown away, like an empty cartridge. If you liked it, I'd worry about you - you never struck me as a sadomasochist." Marc fooled around with the radio, until he came across a station playing a new Tool song, then he left it there. He still kept glancing at the mirror for a tail, but Lafayette had been right - there was no one watching his house. "So what is it you're scared of?"

He thought about denying it, but it seemed rather pointless. Of course he was scared, and Marc knew it. "What if I'm one of those guys I hate?"

Marc shook his head. "You're not." There was no doubt in his voice at all.

"How can you be so sure?"

He sighed and adjusted his goggles before replying. "Listen, people are selfish by nature; it's hardwired in our genes. It takes a special effort to conquer it, to overcome it, and you do it real easy. Most asshat bastards don't."

"What are you talking about? I'm pretty selfish." He paused briefly. "Asshat?"

"Relatives of ass clowns, only wearing hats," he replied glibly. Then he got more serious. "Anybody who fights as much for other people as yourself is not a selfish bastard. You may be selfish from time to time, but who isn't? I know for a fact that if I'm ever in trouble, you'll drop everything to help me - in fact, you've already done it. Whatever you have done, I know you to be at your core a decent man, more decent than most. So shut the fuck up."

Only Marc could say something that seemed both maudlin and angry at the same time. "Just 'cause I'd help you doesn't make me decent."

"Or Rogue or Xavier or Angel or Bob or your country, or that girl … what was her name? You pulled her outta Asrahar."

"Jalila." He scowled at the side of Marc's face. "Did I just help you prove your point?"

He grinned, flashing his bright white teeth. "You always do, jerkwad."

He punched Marc in the shoulder, pulling the punch slightly so he didn't actually hurt him. Marc chuckled in that knowing, triumphant way of his.

Logan still wasn't sure about any of this, but Marc had a way of making him feel better about the worst things, even coming to accept that he'd probably come to the end of his search. It still wasn't fair.

* * *

She let Bob get settled, and made sure everybody had a stiff drink before sneaking back to check on him.

Well, everybody had a stiff drink but Saddiq, who said he didn't drink alcohol. Out of something akin to spite, Lia gave him a Shirley Temple, but he didn't seem to care. Helga asked him if he was Muslim - the name Saracen seemed to indicate that anyways - but he said no, he wasn't anything, he just didn't drink because alcohol was a poison that could dull your reflexes. He added, almost as an afterthought, that it was okay for people with healing factors, but he didn't have one.

Ha! What a kid. Helga found him almost so endearing she wanted to give him a noogie. Of course it felt weird calling him a kid, as he was as much of a machine in a fight as Logan, maybe even more so, since Sid had none of the loosey goosey street fighting tendencies of Logan; Saddiq fought like a martial arts robot, programmed with every single move in existence. He used 'em well, though, and didn't panic when things started to go tits up, which she always found attractive in a man.

Figuring how uptight he was, she guessed he was a virgin, and that was a bit of an iffy prospect. It'd been a long time since she'd broke someone in, and virgins never lasted long. But then again, they were ready for round two almost immediately, so they generally made up in quantity what they lacked in quality. He was a good looking guy, and his body was tight and fit under his X-Men leathers, so he might be a lot of fun once she got him to loosen up. But did she have the time or the patience to wear him down? He looked about seventeen, but acted like he was seventy. Decisions, decisions.

Helga knocked on the door of Bob's secret office before opening the door and walking in. The secret office was one where the dimensional barriers were thinner, but could only be accessed by Bob or the Powers That Be. He liked to describe it as having a bit of a mystical "lock" on it, but when it came down to it, she didn't give a shit. Did it work? Good. All she needed to know.

He'd also given her some kind of mystical whammy that allowed her to see the door, even when Bob wasn't around to allow it. Even if someone had followed her, they'd have no idea where she went.

The room was lit only by red taper candles, set in a triangular pattern that encompassed most of the room. Inside the broad triangle of candles was Bob, sitting shirtless and cross-legged in a sacred circle made of his own blood. It looked like he was finishing up carving runes in himself with a scalpel. "Howdy hon. How's everybody?"

"Fine since you healed them. What the fuck are you doing?" Some of the runes were the typical one, the ones he always used, but the others were new and troubling. There were Taiwanese symbols that she knew to be some kind of prayer of protection for fighters, and Maori warrior tattoos, and some demonic markings and magic symbols that supposedly had their own power. By carving them in his own skin and making the symbols in his own blood, he was increasing their power. He was also bleeding himself out, but clearly he figured that was something he could stand.

She was also amazed that he could have marked his own back so clearly, especially with those bloody wings, but that probably fell into the range of god abilities.

"Desperate times, all that shit. I'm getting' ready to go callin' on people who probably won't be happy to see me."

She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at him, aware she couldn't make him tell her anything he didn't want to admit. Still, she could smack him. "Are you risking your neck again? 'Cause let me tell ya, I'm gettin' tired of waitin' for your body to reform itself."

"I'm not gonna die," he claimed, and then held up his bloody arms towards her. "I've got protections, see?"

Her scowl deepened until she could feel it tugging at her facial muscles. "Do I hafta kill you now?"

He sighed, lowering his arms. "Hon, I'll be fine. I know what I'm doing."

"Really?"

"Yes. I have to do this, I have no choice. We have to know what's going on, and we have to know it now. This is the only way we can do it."

She placed her hands on her hips, and gave him her best painful death stare. "Who are you visiting, Bob?"

He grimaced, clearly not wanting to, but relented because he was a smart man who didn't want his girlfriend to put his head through the wall. "The Rakshas."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You gonna flesh that out, or do I ask Giles?"

He rolled his eyes, but obeyed, making the scalpel disappear. "They appear in the Hindu pantheon, followers of Ravana; they're seers and closely connected to every god of rage in existence. If someone's up to something, you bet they know about it."

"How closely connected to these gods of rage?"

"They're definitely invited to all the parties."

She made a fist and raised it, so he could see she was serious. "Stop being so Belial, or I'll sock you."

"Sweetie, they don't like me. No one associated with any god of rage does, but the Rakshas are … pissy types. They don't like anyone."

"But especially not you."

"Especially not me," Bob agreed, nodding. "I'm more of a love kinda guy, you know. We really don't mesh."

She had been with Bob long enough that she knew how to read between his lines, no matter how he tried to cover them up. "So what'd you do? Kill one of their family members? Steal their girlfriend? Exile them to a hellish dimension from which they can't escape?"

He hesitated for a moment, and she watched blood bluer than the sky trickle down his chest. She was pretty sure it was a protection rune that was bleeding. "It wasn't exactly a girlfriend …."

It was her turn to sigh and roll her eyes. Bob was lucky he was so powerful and fun and great in bed, or she'd have beaten him to a bloody paste and dumped him in the Los Angeles river. She knew from experience that the "fun" guys were usually trouble, but Bob broke the expectation meter there - what other "fun" boyfriend had ever pissed off so many gods? It was almost like Bob's hobby was tweaking the noses of every single powerful being in existence … and actually, now that she thought about it, it probably was. He just wasn't the type to collect stamps or watch baseball, and wasn't that what she loved about him? You wanted the good, you had to accept the bad, even if the bad was being on the shit list of the entire Hindu pantheon. "If I think you're in major trouble, I'm breaking the circle." She knew from experience that that would break the spell, no matter what it was.

"Fair enough. Just wait until it really looks like major trouble, okay? 'Cause I'm not expecting a walk down Bondi here."

"I guessed from all the carving," she said, gesturing with her head towards all the marks cut into his skin.

He flashed her a brilliant smile that was complete bullshit. "Wish me luck?"

"You probably need a rocket launcher, not luck. So go kick their asses; don't make me come after you and kill you."

Bob gave her a sharp salute, then straightened up, placed his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes, preparing to complete the spell.

It was a good thing he was so loveable, otherwise she'd have stomped him flat a long time ago.

7

The transition was jarring; not like falling, more like being shoved brutally into another reality.

And what a fun reality it was. It smelled like burned meat and slagged metal, and the sky was on fire. Well, no - the sky was fire. Angry red flames free of a fuel source, save for clots of flames that would have been clouds, covered the skyline from horizon to horizon, giving everything a bloody tinge.

Not that there was much to see. There were pavilions far away, loose, soft structures on a bed of what looked like shredded prisms, or maybe fine shards of ice. Under his bare feet they felt cool and perhaps a tad sharp, but he was too well protected to be cut by them. Whether they were glass or ice was irrelevant, and made no difference either way, as no matter how hot it got they weren't going to melt; new reality, new rules of physics.

The realm of Ravana was surprisingly bare, and seemingly empty, with its vast prismatic expanses and flickering red sky, although it did have one awe inspiring thing: a two mile tall statue of Ravana in all his bloodthirsty glory, at least a half mile in length, an artifact that would have blotted out the sun had this world had one. It looked like it was made of something like bronze, but Bob knew from experience that it was actually made of the compressed, heat mummified corpses of his enemies. He was such a cheerful bloke, it was impossible to guess why other gods shunned him.

He kicked the prismatic sand, creating divots that sparkled red in the bloody light, and wondered which reason, out of a possible thousand, Ravana and Rakshas had chosen to ignore him completely. They had to know he was here, it wasn't like this was a crowded dimension, nor was it a place that had lots of gods popping in and out. He smiled, amused that big bad Ravana was laying low, and shouted, "Didn't realize you were so inhospitable, Rav." Just because he knew it would hurt all those ears he had, he began singing - well, more like howling - at the top of his lungs. "Go ahead and play dead, I know that you can hear this! Go ahead and play dead! Why can't you turn and face me? Why can't you turn and face me? You fucking disappoint me!"

There was an oddly musical noise, the tinkling of falling glass, and some of the Rakshas suddenly formed in a circle around him. Finally, he annoyed Ravana just enough to send out his minions.

The Rakshas were probably the only thing uglier than Ravana himself. They were essentially humanoid skeletons covered with a thin layer of leathery, translucent skin, through which you could see pulsing organs in their gut, purplish-grey and brownish red things that quivered and throbbed, even though they technically had no heart or lungs. They were all about six feet tall, with elongated arms that ended in four fingered, lengthy claws, and faces that were rather lupine, with elongated muzzles full of sharp teeth, and three yellow eyes, one in the center of their foreheads, the orbs just floating in the otherwise bare and empty sockets like balls of spoiled aspic.

They snarled at him, growled in a way that sounded like an extended death rattle, and he grinned at them. "Well, took your time, didn't ya? Ravana should fire you lot, 'cause you suck as doormen." He had fudged the facts about the Rakshas to Hel, mainly because he didn't want her to worry more than she was doing already. (Although she had probably asked Giles anyways, and was now prepared to kill him.)

Rakshas were technically evil spirits who were specifically designed to fight gods - most specifically Vishnu - by Ravana, and were more than happy to hurt people if that was all they could find. They were simply vicious, and knew only dishing out pain and torment. The protective runes he'd carved into his skin would keep them from hurting him too badly, but if Ravana wanted to break them, he could. That was the trouble with violent demon gods.

Sadly, much like Charunai, they didn't speak much. Unlike the Charunai, they could, they just didn't like to do it. Several of them stretched out their bony claws, trailing their tips along the invisible energy field protecting his skin, trying to gage how powerful it was. "Go on then," he prompted. "Take me to your leader."

One of the Rakshas, presumably the leader of the group, snarled in a gravelly voice, "What business do you have here, Kama?" If a slab of rough hewn granite could talk, it would sound like a Raksha.

"A god of rage is trying to open up a hole in my dimension. I want to know who it is and why."

"And why would our lord know?"

"Are you telling me he _isn't _omniscient?" Bob gasped dramatically, and reared back in mock horror. "No! Say it isn't so!"

The leader leaned in, his translucent lip pulling back to bare even more of his teeth … which was technically impossible because his skin was see through, but oh well. "Are you mocking our liege?"

"I'd never," Bob replied, with blunt sarcasm. There was some doubt over whether Rakshas actually got sarcasm or not - it may have been too Human for them.

Judging by the way they glanced at each other, yeah, they weren't sure if he was serious or not. He almost felt sorry for the big ugly stupid things. "C'mon guys, you know who's opening up the rift. Why don't ya give us a hint?"

The leader glared at him, his yellow eyes glistening in the red light. "We don't care what Aes -" He paused suddenly as the ground seemed to shake, making an almost musical noise as the glass/ice shards shifted and shuddered. By the way the Raksha backed up as one and bowed deeply, he knew Ravana had finally shown up. The power of the demon lord sizzled behind him, and he could smell his special reek of rotting corpses.

"Kama," he boomed, sounding like the vaguely stereotypical royal blowhard that he was. "How nice of you to visit. Now I can kill you in person."


	6. Chapter 6

8

They pulled off for a drink in a bar on a back roads that looked appropriately disreputable, a small, dark bar called "O'Hurley's" that featured chicken wire over the windows and a general smell of beer, vomit, and hopelessness. The interior was dark wood and sawdust, and the bartender had a head like an ugli fruit, all wrinkled and scarred, sunburn turning it a lobsterish shade of red.

Just like home.

He and Marc sat at one end of the bar, getting stared at relentlessly by some Canadian rednecks in a back booth, but they were too cowardly to approach them … so far. Logan figured that'd change in two or three beers time.

Because Logan remembered he had turned off his cell phone, he pulled it out of his pocket and found out a couple of messages had been forwarded to his "message box", but Logan had no idea he had one, or what the hell it was. Before he turned his phone off, it buzzed (he couldn't call that noise a ring), and he was loath to answer it, but Marc raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, go on."

He scowled at him, but did answer it, just because he didn't want to seem like an idiot afraid of a phone call. But did he ever get _good _news via the phone? "Yeah?"

"Hey Logan," Angel's voice said, just slightly tinny with distance. "Hope I'm not interrupting something."

"Just another sad attempt to get drunk. So what's up? End of the world again?"

"Funny you should say that …" And then Angel proceeded to tell him all about the nascent Hellmouth, the possessed apartment building in Brentwood, a god of rage, and the fact that they all got their asses handed to them. Bob was off doing something that Helga called "fool ass stupid", which with Bob could have meant anything.

"So you're gearing up for a final assault?" Logan asked, not really surprised. Wherever Angel was, trouble seemed to be - god, did he ever sympathize.

"I think Helga called it a suicide squeeze, but yes, basically that's it."

"And you'd like me to come and die with the rest of you."

"You got other plans?"

Logan felt the decision had already been made. Chance had weighed in as much as anything else and forced his hand. "You know me to walk away from a fight, no matter how hopeless?"

"That's kind of why I called," he admitted. "Faith with you?"

"No. Marc's with me."

"Think he'd be interested in joining the fight?"

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, okay. We're gearing up at the Way Station."

"See you as soon as possible," Logan said, disconnecting the phone. As soon as he tucked it back in his coat pocket, he saw Marc staring at him over his beer.

"World ending again?"

"Apparently. Angel was wondering if he we could swing by L.A. and help turn the tide. Or die horribly, whichever. I figure I can call Jaromir, Tony's spare pilot, to pick us up at the nearest airport - we should get to California in a couple hours. If you're game, that is."

He snorted derisively, putting his beer back on the bar. "Oh yeah, I wanna get my soul eaten by a hell god. Well, my theoretical soul, and a theoretical hell and god; philosophy major over here, y'know."

"So was that a yes?"

"Hell yeah." He paused and seemed to turn serious, and Logan just knew what he was going to ask. "That guy in Maine -"

"If the world ends, it ain't gonna matter. We stop it, I can pay him a visit."

Marcus studied him for what seemed like much too long a time, as if seeing straight through him. This was the out he was looking for, and Marc must have known that. But Marc clearly decided now wasn't the time to discuss it. "You ever wonder if Bob's pulling cosmic strings for you?"

Logan scoffed, grabbing his sweating mug of beer. "If he is, he's not doing it enough." He finished off his beer - warm and weak as it was - in five swallows, while Marcus gulped down the rest of his. Marc then slammed his mug down, bolting to his feet, and shouted, "Woo hoo! We're gonna save the world or die trying, motherfuckers!"

Logan barely swallowed back the beer before he laughed, but it was a near thing - he choked a little, glad it didn't go out his nose. The bartender was now glaring at them, along with the rednecks in the corner, but it was pretty much a sure thing they weren't going to fuck with the crazy black guy and his sideburned friend now. Logan gave them a sarcastic little wave as he got up and headed for the door, following a strutting Marcus. "So this is basically the Alamo we're heading into?" Marc asked, not even glancing back.

"Sounds like it."

"Can we be the Mexicans?"

"We can be whatever you wanna be."

Marc pumped his fist up and down. "Solid. I love Canada, bud."

Logan shook his head, unable to stifle the grin. He really hoped Angel knew just what he asked for when he called on them for help. Then again, if he wasn't desperate, he never would have called.

* * *

Bren reached blindly into the wicker bowl on the table, and was astonished to find all the beer nuts were gone. There was no way he could have eaten them all so fast - somebody must have helped.

But who? Kier didn't eat beer nuts; he didn't eat period. Naomi was sitting at such an angle to him that she'd have had to have reached across him to get to the peanuts, and Sid was sitting directly across from him, so if he had reached for them, there was no way he could have missed that. Bren knew was a nervous eater, but he must have been shoving beer nuts in his mouth by the handful to have finished the bowl so fast. Shit. Well, at least he wasn't shotgunning his drink … but shotgunning Irish crème liqueur probably just ended in copious vomiting.

While Bob was doing … whatever (Helga was pretty evasive, and no one felt especially compelled to ask, maybe because they all felt they had more than enough to cope with at the moment), Giles was trying to call Mordred, but kept getting his machine. They all heard Angel talk to Logan, who was apparently happy to join the "party", and was bringing Marcus along. Good news only in the sense that they could probably clear a path up the stairs of the building, just in time for them all to rip each other's heads off at the seventh floor. (Bren hoped he lived long enough to witness a Logan/Angel fight, because that was bound to be epic.)

Sid wasn't indulging in the fear or self-pity though - did he ever? Bren envied him his emotional removal from each and all situations. He looked like he was thinking hard about something, staring at an old, faded drink ring marring the table top where they all sat, fretting in silent communion.

As Giles hung up in frustration for what seemed the eighth time, Xander suddenly asked, "Why not call Willow? She's not made of magic, but she has closed a Hellmouth before."

Xander, Angel, and Giles were all sitting at the bar, but with several stools between them all. They had a longer shared history, but it was clear that there was tension there, that the three of them may have shared a history that the others didn't, but there were things unresolved, issues that hadn't quite faded with time. They were like a family who became estranged and yet didn't want to admit to themselves or each other how much they had all grown apart.

After thinking about it for a moment, Giles handed Xander the phone, and he called Willow. Bren listened with some interest at the jukebox switching over rather than their phone call, because he was intrigued by the thing. It had done nothing but play oddly appropriate songs since they'd gotten here. How did it do that? At first he thought it goofed up with mopey Morrissey's "Suedehead", but then he realized the chorus was _"Why do you come here when you know it makes things hard for me". _A tad mild, but appropriate. The next song took no chances with subtlety - Rammstein's "Du Hast". It was probably even scarier if you understood the words.

Sid tapped his fingers on the table idly, and said, "Perhaps we should call the institute, see if we can get some help from there."

Naomi barked a brief, bitter laugh. "Are you kidding? I could barely effect those people; I had to bake their internal organs to make them stop, and it didn't stop them for good. And I'm the heavy hitter around here." She said that last part matter of factly, with no arrogance. It was generally true, and they all knew it.

Sid grimaced, but wasn't discouraged. "I admit, a lot of mutants will be no help."

"Xavier's totally out," Bren interjected. "If Bob accidentally turns telepath's brains into mush, just think what would happen when we encounter a god who means to hurt 'em."

Sid nodded in agreement. "Really only one name comes to mind. I figure that Logan, Marcus, Scott, and myself can take care of everyone from the sixth floor down - that'll leave the rest of you take on everyone that's made it down to the seventh floor, until you turn on each other and kill yourselves." He frowned. "Okay, that part of the plan needs work."

Bren stared across the table at Sid in open disbelief. "Did you say Scott?"

"Yes. A solid blast from him could clear the stairs. Not for long, but long enough."

"You know what a hard time he has with all this supernatural shit. And these are people, possessed or not. Besides, what if he overshoots? He could take out a wall."

"Yes. But our opponent isn't playing fair, so why should we?"

Now Bren could see how Logan had rubbed off on Sid. That was a logical statement, and yet one limned with a hard, personal edge. "I think he'd have a hard time, even if he agreed to it."

"He'll agree," Sid said, holding his hand out across the table. "Because I asked him. May I have your phone?"

Bren grumbled, but dug out his phone. He knew Sid had become Scott's "golden boy" since he'd gone, and he didn't begrudge him that position - he'd never wanted it in the first place - but it was weird how little moments of jealousy would sting. He just wished he could call someone and be that sure of their response.

As Sid called and made his pitch to Scott, Bren wondered if Bob was doing any better than the rest of them. Because right now, all they were doing was selecting people they wouldn't mind dying with.

* * *

It felt like a hit, but it wasn't actually a physical blow. Still, Bob went flying and landed hard in the shredded glass/ice, his palms digging into the assorted edges as the back of his head hit the ground hard. Yeah, that hurt.

Ravana loomed over him, his movement followed by a sound not unlike crunching snow. "You arrogant little whelp! How dare you come here and disturb my peace -"

"Your peace? Yeah, this place is like a bloody graveyard. Do you ever get anything but peace here? I remember you as a party guy."

Ravana paused and glared down at him - well, seven of his heads did.

Ravana had ten heads, with seven of them lined up in a row across an insanely broad set of shoulders. He was approximately eight feet wide and ten feet tall, with thick bronze skin like armor plates, and arms and legs as thick as tree trunks. One of his heads was embedded firmly in the center of his broad chest, and the other two were on long, thin appendages that grew out of his back and generally craned over the other heads for a better look. Although the faces had a similar arrangement of features - two large eyes as featureless and black as insect carapaces, a dent that could have been considered a nose (if you were generous), and a lipless slash of a mouth that looked like an open wound - the faces actually did have slight variances, and no two looked precisely alike. Not only was it creepy, but when you considered the fact that he wore nothing but a loincloth and a slim leather belt from where hung his solid handled mace, his curved sword, and his whip made from the skin of Rakshas that had angered him, he went from creepy to completely fucking scary in almost no time flat.

"What the hell does that mean?" he snapped crossly. At least he only spoke with one voice. "_Party guy_. Have you lost your tiny little mind, Kama?"

"Name's Bob now," he pointed out, getting up to his feet. He took a couple of step away from Ravana, but pretended like he was stumbling, so he looked wimpy as opposed to cowardly. The Rakshas were not in view, but they wouldn't be - their lord could take care of himself.

"Why? That's a horrible name."

He scoffed. "Yeah, like Kama was all that good. Listen to me, Ravana, someone is claiming to be you and trying to invade my world. I thought you'd like to know about it."

Ravana had been removing the whip from his belt, but he stopped, and seven of his head swiveled towards him. (The one in his chest had no choice but to look - the other two on their stalk like necks were searching the horizons for trouble.) "What?"

The thing about Ravana - the thing he had in common with nearly all gods, demon gods or not - was his enormous ego. If someone was claiming to be him, doing things in his name without his sanction, he'd be right pissed off. And judging by the fury on the majority of his faces, he was right. "I knew it wasn't you. I mean, come on - vandalizing buildings, possessing people? Hardly your style."

Oh yeah, _now_ he was pissed. Not only was someone pretending to be him, they were using his name _and_ being lame at the same time. He turned a darker shade of bronze as he became quietly furious. "Who is doing this?"

"I don't know. I only know it's a god of rage. I figured you or your Rakshas would know."

"Vermin!" Ravana bellowed, and suddenly the Rakshas were all there, as if they'd grown out of the ice. They were also all bowing, and when they straightened, their eyes were averted. "Who is doing this?"

Groveling and sniveling ever so slightly, the lead Raksha said, "My liege, we believe that Aesma Daeva is the only active god who fits the parameters. But we have not heard that he's claiming to be you."

"Aesma Daeva?" Bob repeated in disbelief. Oh holy fuck, that was bad news. "Why the hell would he be trying to punch into the earth dimension now?"

Even though Bob asked the question, the Raksha did answer him, mainly because he and Ravana weren't currently fighting - until they were fighting or Ravana declared him an enemy, he was to be considered an ally of his king. "We don't know. We've heard he's bored, but he is always is."

"He's an asshole," Ravana grumbled dismissively.

"He's a mass murderer!" Bob exclaimed. "Remember what he did to the Amesha Spentas?"

Ravana waved one of his big, seven fingered hands like his words were simply gnats bothering his eternal peace. "They were a bunch of simpering pussies. They deserved what they got."

Only Ravana - who was technically a mass murderer himself - could say that and mean it. Aesma Daeva - "Dave" for short - was the personification of fury and madness, with a little dabbling in lust on the side. He fed on rage, hate, insanity, and shed it in equal numbers, so he was by himself a vicious circle: he spawned what he fed off of, so he could never starve. As such, he was incredibly powerful, because he had an endless supply of "fuel".

Still, to be doing this, he had to be "super-charging", finding a wellspring unconnected to him, something that gave him enough power to punch through the veil between worlds. After all, Ahura Mazda had supposedly locked him away, isolated him in a pocket dimension that wasn't that close to any beings he could harm or feed from. Clearly the incomplete portal in the sewer opened up somewhere in his universe, but far enough away from him and far too weakly to prevent its closure. But had something been left behind? A weak point, or perhaps a "scout" who was able to contact Dave, help him open up a firmer foothold in this world?

Bob was suddenly aware that Ravana's heads were all glaring at him again, as he started uncoiling the whip from his belt. "Why would Aesma be so foolish as to claim to be me?"

"Good question," Bob said, smearing the locator icon he'd drawn on the palm of his hand. "I'll ask him."

With the destination of Ravana's reality obliterated, Bob felt reality reach out and snatch him back like elastic, bungee-ing him straight into another reality, although this one was closer, and much less difficult to get into: Degei's world of cooling fog and writhing snakes, the scales of the ground shimmering before resolving into approximation of grass and trees, flowers and creeks.

If he was going to face Dave, he'd need help, and something to even up the odds. It wasn't easy to petition Ahura, as he'd gone into self-imposed exile long ago, and there was no direct way of contacting him. But the good news was Dave scared a lot of gods, so getting help shouldn't be too hard … assuming they weren't total raving cowards.

Damn it, it was always something.

9

The good news was Willow thought she and her coven could help them out. But there was a catch - wasn't there always?

The catch was her and her coven were overseas, and simply couldn't get here. So for them to be truly effective on a real time basis, she needed a "proxy", essentially someone who would act as her eyes and ears here. As a ritual it wasn't terribly complicated, but it did mean that someone would have Willow "piggybacking" their consciousness, a combination backseat driver and stowaway.

Bren was relieved when Xander volunteered for it. "Look, I'm just a normal Human anyways," he said, after Giles asked him if he was sure about it. "All I am is cannon fodder. If I have a witch inside me, hey, I'm finally bringing something to the table. Also, Will and I have been friends for so long, I kinda feel like she's piggybacking my conscience sometimes anyways."

While Giles - with Willow's coven still on the phone - did the ritual for Xander, Bren's cell phone rang. He'd told Sid to tell Scott to give him a ring as soon as he reached Ashe Avenue, as there was no way that Scott would be able to find the Way Station on his own (he was a Human, after all, and the glamour around the building prevented them from seeing it). It was Scott - that X-Jet was pretty damn fast.

Bren went out to retrieve him from the corner, where he waited looking faintly perturbed. He wasn't in his X-Men gear, just in jeans and a blue t-shirt (which was weird, because he was pretty sure he'd _never_ seen him in just jeans and a t-shirt, except when he was working on one of his cars), his hair looking windblown and slightly unkempt. In fact, it looked like he hadn't shaved today either, stubble stained his jaw line, and that was really weird.

Maybe Scott read the look on his face, because he said, "Do you know what time it is in New York?"

Oh yeah, the time difference. He shrugged meekly, then pasted on a smile and replied, "At least you're an early riser, huh?"

Scott didn't look amused. But then again, he generally didn't.

Bren led him back to the Way Station, where he grimaced at the transition from the quiet of the seemingly dark, derelict building to the noisy, smelly confines of a perfectly functioning, populated bar. But Scott was lucky and he didn't realize it; just a minute ago, Ministry was thundering from that weird jukebox. Now it was just playing Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand", which was quieter yet more creepy, and much easier on everyone's ears.

At least he knew almost everyone in the bar - Helga, Naomi, Sid, Angel. He had to be introduced to Kier, though, and Xander and Giles, but for the latter pair they had to wait until they were done with the ritual. There was a little in the way of sparkling light, but that was pretty much it for the ritual, except Xander staggered back and had to lean against the wall to keep from falling over. After a moment, he shook his head and looked around, as if his surroundings were new to him. "Wow, it actually worked," he said, but his voice was slightly different; it sounded a little higher, a little lighter. "Whoa, look how tall I am." Xander held up his arm then, flexed it, and seemed to admired it. "And look how muscle-y I am. I bet I could arm wrestle all of you into squeally submission."

Suddenly, in his normal voice, he said, "Will, would you knock it off?"

"Crap in a hat," Kier exclaimed. "Are they actually sharing a body?"

"In a way," Xander said, but in his lighter Willow voice. "I'm astral projecting, but I'm also connected to the coven through Rhia, so I can tell them what kind of help we need."

Scott just stared at him/her for a very long moment, and finally turned to Bren. "Just what the hell have I walked into?"

They had just about explained everything to Scott when Bob emerged from the back, his naked torso covered in bloody runes and tattoos, which also trailed down his arms and marred his face. "Okay, things are a bit more complicated than I thought," he began, then looked at Xander. "Hi Willow. Nice of you to join us."

She (he - damn, this was already confusing) waved shyly and smiled, but then suddenly frowned. "Hey - how did you know?"

But Bob had already moved on to other things. "It seems our god of rage is Aesma Daeva, which complicates thing infinitely. Oh, hey Scott."

"Aesma Daeva?" Giles repeated, looking and sounding alarmed. "Isn't he a war god? A god of madness?"

"Oh, fun," Willow sighed.

"You are aware you're bleeding, aren't you?" Scott pointed out to Bob. Considering he'd flown across the country with precious little sleep, he was actually handling all of this quite well.

"What?" Bob said distractedly. "Oh, yeah." It was like reality blinked - it was impossible to explain, and it was also impossible to believe it happened - and yet Bob was suddenly standing there unbloodied and un-tattooed, in clean leather pants and a novelty t-shirt reading _Australians Do It Upside Down_. "Right, Dave's a bit of a dog's dinner -"

"Dave?" Giles interrupted in disbelief.

"It's what I call him. Anyhoo, we're not gonna be able to do it alone, so I'm tryin' to get some of my friends lined up, but gods are kinda of … moody."

"And they're generally dicks," Helga offered.

Bob just nodded. "Always a bit of a problem. Still, we're going to have to attack this on three separate fronts if we want to have any success. I'll be taking on Dave at his home, distracting him, while one of the groups tries to shut the Hellmouth from this side. The other group will be shutting down the other portal, the one we've neglected, that's allowing Dave to pull power from this side. It's a fuel source, and as soon as it's shut, it'll weaken him. It should make it easier for the other teams to do their jobs."

Angel sat up straight on his barstool, his brow furrowing in consternation. "What other portal?"

"Yeah, see, that little detail we missed. And we would, 'cause it's unlike any portal you've ever encountered. It's feeding Dave's need for madness, rage, all that stuff he needs as much as engenders. Naomi, I want you to take Giles, Bren, and Kier to shut it down; it's my guess you should be able to handle it, 'cause there's not much in the way of mystical protections."

"Me?" Naomi scoffed. "I haven't been able to do much, have I?"

"You will in this situation. Trust me."

But Naomi didn't let it go that easily. "Why?"

Bob sighed, letting his head roll to his shoulder. "'Cause the portal is a person."

"What?" Nearly everyone in the room asked it, although they hadn't worked out the timing so it wasn't quite in unison. Giles was the first to continue on. "What do you mean the portal is a person? Embodied in a person?"

"Not _that_ again," Xander/Willow sighed, rolling his eyes.

"No, the portal _is_ a person. Well, not precisely a person; definitely a humanoid who can pass for one. I believe they were sent as a scout once the incomplete Hellmouth was opened in the sewer. As soon as they found a place that Dave - its master - would consider a buffet, it opened itself as a conduit. Think of them as a special kind of god servant; not an avatar, but … a personal valet, in a way. They were created by their master and are programmed to be totally loyal. The channeling is all very metaphysical, but no problem at all for a lot of gods, Dave included."

"You know who this portal is," Angel asked, although it didn't actually sound like a question.

"No mate, but I know where they are. I'm hoping that Rupert can figure out a way to suss out our portal on site."

It was rare that he had an intuition about anything, but Bren suddenly had an awful feeling, like his stomach was trying to slowly digest itself. Bob was evading the most obvious fact, and Bren just knew that if he pressed for the answer, he'd regret it. But still he had to do it. "Where is this place?" he asked, trying very hard not to tense as if preparing for a hit. It was hard, because Bren was expecting the answer to come down on him like an anvil.

Bob gave him a sympathetic look, like he knew what he was thinking, and he was so sorry he had to confirm his worst fears. "It's a place out near Oakland called Rosewood."

"Rosewood?" Helga repeated, her tail twitching anxiously. "Where have I heard that name before?"

"It's a high security hospital for the criminally insane," Bob reluctantly admitted.

Yeah, okay, his stomach was definitely eating itself now. Why couldn't his intuition have been wrong?


	7. Chapter 7

10

They had to wait for Logan and Marcus to arrive before they could get underway, but luckily they didn't have to wait too much longer, and once the pair of them arrived, they were brought up to speed pretty quickly. Logan seemed puzzled that Scott had been called in, but pretty much kept his comments to himself. Scott looked about as thrilled to have Marcus there, but what could he say about it?

Helga sat waiting, wondering if anyone else had caught what she was sure she had caught. Probably not; no one here knew Bob quite as well as she did.

Both the kids - Bren and Kier - looked shit scared, but the words "home for the criminally insane" had a tendency to do that. Giles was too much of an old pro to show how freaked out he was, and Naomi was a credit to her gender by acting dubious about it all, not scared, just curious about Bob's sanity. Logan wondered if they didn't need some more support, but Bob assured them the humanoid portal wouldn't be too heavily guarded because Dave would want to keep it all "under the radar", and the group left, trying to figure out if Naomi would fry Giles's car wiring or not.

What Helga had figured out was Bob was pretty much guaranteeing their survival; he'd selected them to have the best chance of living through this. The rest of them would have to fight to do it, in a building that made "Night of the Living Dead" look like a Disney film. By sending them on a scary sounding mission, he had actually spared them the worst of it.

He wanted to give them time to reach Rosewood, so Bob suggested everyone have another drink, which led Scott to point out that going into a fight tanked wasn't a good idea. "I don't know about that," Bob replied. "You'll sober up quick in that place. It's being transformed into the tenth circle of hell."

"I thought there were only nine," Marc said, proving he'd read Dante.

Bob considered his response carefully. "Technically, there's forty thousand or so, if you count every single separate hell dimension. But there was no way Dante could have known that."

"Forty thousand?" Scott repeated in disbelief. "You're making that up."

"Actually there's probably more, depending on your definition of hell. If I said there's more "bad" gods than good, would I break your heart?"

Scott scowled at him. "I don't know. You seem like one of the bad ones, so I'm not surprised."

Bob grabbed his chest and staggered back dramatically, feigning a heart attack. "Oh, you got me. How do I live..?"

Helga gave him a little push. "Knock it off, drama queen."

Bob gave her an indignant look, but he was fighting down a smile, humor sparkling in his cobalt eyes. "Just because I enjoy being the center of attention doesn't make me a drama queen. I'm just extra needy."

She smiled at him and shook her head. Again, it was a good thing he was so loveable.

Willow and Xander argued briefly between themselves - Xander wanted an alcoholic drink, but Willow didn't drink alcohol, so eventually Xander gave in and they had a coffee (like Scott) - before Bob said, "Wait twenty minutes, then head to Brentwood. They should be at Rosewood by then, and I should be in Dave's dimension."

"Can you beat him?" Helga asked, actually fairly certain she knew the answer.

He grimaced, but for once, he told the truth. "In a straight fight, no. But that's why I'm making a stop before I confront him. So you'll excuse me if I bugger off."

"We can count on you to actually do your part, right?" Scott asked, a bit bitchily.

Bob smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Pity about that rash."

"What rash?" Scott asked, then scratched the back of his neck rather emphatically. "Damn it."

Logan chuckled. "Remind me never to annoy you."

"At least you'd never remember it if you did," Bob replied cheerfully, giving his a suspicious wink. Before Logan could ask about that, Bob turned to Lia and said, "Why don't you get Scott some calamine lotion?"

Lia stared back at him in bewildered disbelief. "What? Since when did I become a bloody nurse?"

"Please sweetheart?"

She sighed explosively and rolled her eyes, which Bob all but ignored. Scott kept scratching his neck, unaware that Bob had just given him the rash. Actually, the Boy Scout was lucky - if she had been Bob, she'd have given him crabs the size of crawfish.

Bob hugged her and gave her a goodbye kiss on the cheek, taking the opportunity to whisper in her ear, "Keep 'em alive, love."

"I'll do my best," she whispered back. "But I make no promises about the Boy Scout."

He gave her an encouraging smile and a pat on the back. It seemed to say "casualties happen", but maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part.

She had no idea where he was off to now, but she didn't ask, because she thought it was probably for the best that she didn't know. If he hadn't done it already, it couldn't be that bad.

Right?

* * *

He could have just walked in the front door, but what was the fun in that?

Instead he materialized on the uppermost floor of Wolfram and Hart, just in front of the elevator, and he heard the alarm that went off the instant he solidified. Now, come on, what kind of welcome was that?

People fled from their offices, down the opposite end of the hall, and Bob stepped towards them, singing loudly, "My cock is much bigger than yours! My cock can walk right through the door!"

A ghost suddenly materialized several feet in front of him, a somewhat severely handsome Asian man in a crisp five thousand dollar suit. "Bob, we don't know the meaning of this, but we'd rather not have any trouble."

He grinned, not bothering to hide the humor in it. "What, you don't like System of a Down?"

The ghost lawyer scowled at him. "You know what I mean."

"I'm not here to cause trouble, Gavin me boy, I just want to speak to your masters." The ghost looked vaguely surprised at the use of his name. "What, did you really think a ghost would be immune to me? Please. In fact, I could do a lot I bet they never told you." He reached out and gabbed Gavin by the lapels, which startled him so much that he looked pale - even for a ghost.

"How the hell can you touch me?" he exclaimed, dropping his cool façade momentarily.

"Why wouldn't I be able to touch you? I'm not entirely physical, after all - I'm a bit more than that." He pulled Gavin closer, and said conspiratorially, "You know, Logan really is my avatar, so it's a good thing you didn't challenge him on it. As my avatar I consider him part of my family, and you do know what happens to you if you fuck with me and mine, don't you? You fuck with him in any way and I find out about it, I'm gonna bring this place down around your ears. Got it, mate?" He said the last word with heavy sarcasm, tightening his grip on his collar more than necessary. If he'd had a physical as opposed to spectral body, he would have choked.

His hazel eyes widened in alarm, although the professional evil lawyer guise quickly slammed down again as he tried to regain his composure. "No one wants to start the war again, Bob."

Bob let him go, giving him a slight shove back. "Good. Tell your bosses to keep that in mind. Now, are you gonna lead me to the White Room, or do I barge in uninvited?"

Gavin straightened his coat and moved his neck as if Bob had wrenched it. He hadn't even come close, but fine, whatever. Always had to claim whiplash. "If you know where it is, why bother with this charade?"

"Because I'm trying to be polite." He grinned, showing his teeth, a half smile that was inherently hostile. "Now, shall we?"

Gavin didn't look impressed, but underneath his cynical expression he was trying very hard not to freak out. Bob had the power here, all of it, and if he wanted to disincorporate him he could do it at any moment, and in a way that would preclude the Senior Partners from ever getting him back. This was all a mere formality, a dance, and Bob could end it at any time. It was really disturbing for a man used to having all the power on his side.

He pretended to think about it, and then led Bob to another elevator.

Once inside, Gavin reached above the bank of buttons, and put his hand through the panel like a good little ghost. But it was more than that; Bob could see the hidden button beneath the panel, the one leading to the "special" floor, the one that was simply a thin spot between dimensions, much like his in the back of the bar or at his Sydney home. Bob could have simply triggered the button himself, but seriously, where was the fun in that? Making Gavin squirm, Wolfram and Hart toady that he was, was funny.

Gavin slipped out of the elevator once the doors closed, leaving Bob to take the lift alone, which suited him fine.

The elevator opened on what seemed to be an endless, featureless white room, the temperature lukewarm against all expectations of cold. As soon as Bob stepped out onto the floor the elevator disappeared as if it had never been there at all. But again it was an illusion, and one that wasn't all that special. None of this was all that special.

He heard a low rumbling noise, and saw a large blank panther slink out of the whiteness, growling at him. He couldn't help but laugh. "Oh please, mate, save it for the punters." He reached out and touched one of the white walls, and twisted the scenario.

It wasn't all that hard, actually. One Senior Partner, one slightly depowered PTB - they were essentially evenly matched. With just a hard thought he changed the white room into the San Diego zoo, more specifically the old big cat habitat. The black panther avatar of the SP was now behind the black bars of a cage, looking out with an expression of almost Human surprise. Bob had changed his own wardrobe to one more "crocodile hunter" like: loose khaki shirt, matching walking shorts, hiking boots, and a stupid ass pith helmet. "See, I got parlor tricks of my own."

He felt the illusion wrench away from him, and he let it go without a fight. He only wanted to prove a point, and he was certain he had.

The white room/San Diego Zoo suddenly became a rather stuffy and somewhat bland study, with overstuffed wing chairs and a red carpet with a loud pattern that suggested blood splatter. Bookcases full of books, ones with covers made of human skin and demon hide, ringed the walls, and standing in the middle of the room was a somewhat matronly woman with elegantly upswept brown hair, her heavy red velvet dress suggesting Victorian elegance without all the petticoats and corsets. "You are a low creature, aren't you?" the Senior Partner spat, crossing her arms across her ample bosom.

"You know me, no good convict born Ozzie surfer trash," he replied amicably, sure the SP wouldn't get the joke and wouldn't care anyways.

"You're violating the agreement by coming here, you know."

"I made no agreement with you, and you know the PTB's have precious little control over me. Not for lack of trying, bless 'em, but as I said, I'm trash."

She/it harrumphed, but it couldn't argue with him. "Why are you here, Bob?"

"Ah, down to business. We have a mutual enemy trying to break through to this plane, and I thought you might wanna give us a hand in tossing them out."

She/it snorted derisively. "Fight your own battles. We don't care."

"You will when I tell you its Dave."

She cocked her head to the side, her featureless black eyes giving nothing away. But she/it was thinking, and communicating with the rest of the Partners. He knew how it worked; he'd done this with the PTBs before. "Do you mean Aesma Daeva?"

"You know any other gods named Dave?"

Her/its features seemed to sharpen as she/it looked straight at him. "Why? Why does he come back now?"

Bob shrugged, aware such a Human gesture would really annoy the Partner. "No idea. Some bonehead accidentally opened a hole into his dimension, and I guess he decided he could use the amusement. But the long and short of it is, we're completely fucked. He's opening a gap as we speak, in an apartment in Brentwood, and he's opened it just enough that he's already influencing everyone there. And almost prevented my teleport when I went in there. He's also let some Charunai through."

She/it waved her hand dismissively. "Just sic some brain parasites on it."

"I don't _do_ parasites. That's more your kinda thing."

She/it scowled at him, and he simply shoved his pith helmet back on his head, waiting for all of the Partners to come to a decision. "There are others you could go to."

"Yeah, and there are others involved, but isn't this your precious territory? I'll be damned if me and my friends are gonna fight to defend your space. You want a foothold in this world? You want one right here, in L.A.? Earn your fucking keep."

She/it glared at him through narrowed eyes. "You'd fight him anyways."

"But we might lose. You know how powerful he is. Are you willing to risk it?"

Again the disgusted look, the frosty body language. But he knew they would cave, simply because Dave was a huge problem, one they didn't want to deal with on their own. He was rage and he was madness, and he could make the Partner's followers turn on them quite easily. Dave was a problem they didn't need.

At least, if you couldn't depend on someone's good nature, you could depend on their desire not to lose their power.

11

It was hard to believe it was sunrise. In fact, it didn't look like it at all.

Bob had said it wouldn't be a factor, and yet Angel found it hard to believe, especially since he didn't bother to explain why it wouldn't be a problem. But out on the street, it became obvious.

The sunrise was blocked from view due to thick black and iron grey clouds, which blanketed the sky like it had been wrapped in cotton wool. The air was charged with ozone, and fat raindrops were not so much falling as spitting down in fits and spurts, blood warm and with an odd tinge of salt. The sun was up and out there - it was making his skin itch, the feeling of the looming, deathly sun - but not a single ray was getting through, nor was it likely to. "Now how did this happen?" Scott wondered, looking up. "It was clear when I got here."

"Bob knows a lot of … people," Helga said, totally unconcerned. "I'm sure he called in favors."

"People as in gods?" Xander - or possibly Willow; at this point the line was blurring pretty fast. "Can we depend on them for help?"

Helga was forced to shrug and shake her head. "They all do their own thing. It's hard to say. If Bob could depend on them, he wouldn't need us."

That was sad but probably true, and also kind of humbling. They were the last resort.

He hoped Naomi and Bren were okay. Giles could pretty well take care of himself, and he just didn't care about Kier, as he still didn't trust him completely. He just hoped that Kier didn't pick now to do his backstabbing double crossing. Going to an insane asylum was never easy, but that had to be doubly true when you were pursuing an agent of some evil god.

When they reached Brentwood, thunder had finally started rumbling, but it was off in the distance, and the rain was pattering down in a slightly lackadaisical manner, as if the clouds could barely be bothered to spill their contents. Along with the quiet and seemingly empty block, it just increased the eeriness, and the humidity was quickly becoming stultifying. Even though he was dead and usually impervious to these sorts of things, Angel could feel it; the air was like a warm, wet towel across their faces. Uncomfortable was too mild a word for such a condition.

"Do we actually have a plan?" Scott asked.

"Not much point to one," Helga replied. "They'll be expecting us, and our plans are totally dependant on how they decide to respond."

"I thought our plan was just kill 'em all and get Willow and you up to the seventh floor," Logan said.

Helga shrugged half-heartedly. "Well, that's the meat of it. But there'll probably be tweaks around the edges."

"Kill them all?" Scott repeated with obvious distaste. "I thought they were already dead."

"Well, yeah, but what else are you gonna call it?" Helga asked, giving him a funny but slightly severe look.

Scott had no answer for that. While you technically couldn't "kill" the dead, it was somehow done every day. If you worried too much about the semantics, you had way too much time on your hands.

When they reached Sun Plaza, they found that the door was open. Not just unlocked - wide open, as if someone had propped it open for a moment to move their sofa out. Shadows pooled inside, and it was impossible even for him to make out if there was anything waiting for them.

Logan audibly sniffed, then reared back his head and lifted the back of his hand to his nose. "Son of a bitch."

"Stinks, don't it?" Xander/Willow commiserated.

"Worse," Logan grumbled. "It smells like boiled blood, rancid meat, and burned skin."

Angel had thought the scent had a bloody tinge - as a vampire, he could pick up the slightest hint of blood - but Logan had added layers to the description. It wasn't that he was incorrect, it was just his own personal demon really didn't give a shit about anything else.

"Are they burning people?" Scott asked, sounding appalled.

Helga scoffed. "They've gouged people's eyes out with soup spoons. Burning would probably be the least thing they've done."

"Fun," Marcus said, pulling out two automatic handguns. They were cocked and ready to go. "Good thing you and I are wearing goggles, huh Scott?"

Scott didn't reply to that, but no one expected him to.

"Anybody ahead of us?" Logan asked Marc. "I can't single 'em out by smell."

Marc seemed to look up and down the building, and shook his head. "I'm not reading heat signatures, just some kinda nightmare infrared bleed up around the seventh floor. If you want my expert opinion, they're all fucking zombies, 'cause ain't a single one of 'em are registering as alive."

"Not a total shock," Angel said, although he was quietly relieved. He knew he hadn't heard heartbeats, but he was still unsure about their actual state; the god could be fucking with his senses, like it seemed to fuck with everyone else's sanity.

Logan popped his claws, which made Xander/Willow jump, and walked on inside the building, grumbling, "Last one in is a total fucking coward."

"Hey now, that's an insult to honest cowards," Marc said, following him in. Being with Marc and Logan was sometimes like trailing a couple of wisecracking "buddy cops" in an action film, only they weren't cops, this wasn't a film, and they had a tendency to leave real carnage in their wake. The sad thing was this was often their selling point.

Inside the building it was still dark, and seemingly empty, although no one trusted it. Still they went up the staircase carefully, warily, the tension as bad as the threat of thunder outside. Finally on the second floor, they found people waiting for them; people with bloody eyes, people with weapons as varied and odd as baseball bats, kitchen knives, bookends, and machetes. Marcus sniped them, shooting out their knees or heads, mainly depending on the age of the "zombie", while Logan plunged through the crowd, leveling the front of the group, while he, Helga, and Saddiq picked off the rest of crowd. Scott shot one or two, but mostly stayed out of it, as did Xander/Willow, who kept on the staircase. "You were right," Xander said to himself … no, Willow said to Xander. Again, hard to separate the two.

The third floor was clear, but when they hit the fourth floor, people started jumping down at them from the upper level.

They attacked like demons, like crazed animals, falling down on them like air dropped commandoes, some with weapons, some not, crushing them, kicking, punching, and biting at anyone in their range. They fell by the dozens upon dozens, trying to swarm them like ants, and Angel could feel them pulling his hair, biting his arm, and only throwing an occasional punch in his midsection. Angel punched out randomly, kicked out, grabbed the occasional possessed person and threw them kicking and screaming over the railing. He wanted to rip their throats out, use his fangs to open a vein and see if there was any blood in them worth anything, but he didn't, because he was fairly sure once he did he'd be gone and Angelus would be ascendant once more. Besides, this wasn't exactly proper fighting; this was pure, desperate madness.

Scott got fed up and turned his visor up to some incredible level, because with a single blast he carved out a huge swath in the crowd, but he overestimated his power and punched through a wall and out the other side. Angel only knew he'd hit the outside because of the fresh air suddenly gusting through the building. It was welcome, but all it did was blow around the stale, bloody scent that seemed to cling to the back of their throats.

Marc shot some of the possessed as they fell down towards them, their heads exploding and showering them with gore, while Logan ripped through even more of them, painting the walls with strips and splatters of blood that marred the graffiti. Sid was still breaking back and necks, while Helga was using her machete to cleave through her portion of the people, splashing around even more blood. If it didn't smell like a charnel house before, it did now.

Scott was tackled from behind and brought down, the crowd dog piling on him frantically, and as they all fought their way towards him, kicking, slashing, and shooting their way towards Scott, a red beam of energy erupted from the heart of the pile and people went flying, while the beam smashed through the ceiling. Angel and Logan reached him at the same time, just as debris started to come down - not only from the ceiling but from all the upper levels his beam had punched through - and Logan shouted, "It's us, don't shoot!" They each grabbed one of Scott's arms and dragged him out of danger as the debris began pelting down in earnest, and Marcus laid down covering fire to keep what was left of the crowd back.

Scott had closed his eyes tight as they dragged him back to the stairs, but he instantly asked, "Where's my visor? Someone took it." He was bleeding from the corner of his mouth, and from deep fingernail scratches that crisscrossed his face, but he looked relatively okay otherwise.

Logan waded back through the fray, kicking aside chunks and pieces of dead bodies as well as debris, while Helga and Sid stood on the stairs leading up to the next level, clearly waiting for the rest of them to get a move on. Logan found something that he held up, but it wasn't a visor more than it was a fragment of something black. "Uh, bad news. They broke it."

"Is it salvageable?"

"Only if you're willing to keep one eye shut."

"Shit."

Scott was forced to keep his eyes shut, meaning he was out of the fight for the time being. Xander/Willow draped his arm around Xander's shoulders and helped the now blind Scott up the stairs, because there was no way they could leave him on his own in here. They were on the sixth floor riser when the gunshots started.

It wasn't Marcus shooting - it was someone shooting at them. And it wasn't handgun fire either. It was machine gun fire that made them all hit the floor as the bullets chewed up the wall behind them, punched through the railing and reduced it to splinters, and zinged over their heads like angry insects. "Holy shit, they've got Uzis," Marc shouted, attempting to fire back blindly, but it was almost useless. He couldn't quite get off a shot at a decent angle, and firing a single round as opposed to a dozen a second seemed like spitting in the ocean.

Sid stood, but Logan instantly yanked him down. "What the fuck are you doin' kid?"

"I'm bulletproof," Sid replied, staring at Logan as if he'd gone mad.

"Then why are you bleedin'?" Logan shouted back, pointing at Sid's left arm.

Saddiq looked, and stared in what was clearly astonishment. There was a small but obvious hole through his arm, bleeding copiously, although luckily a vein hadn't been severed. "How ..?" he wondered, suddenly looking like the very young man he was. "Do they have adamantium bullets?"

"Worse," Xander/Willow said, and held up a perfectly formed silver plated bullet. The bullet shouldn't have been perfectly formed; it should have been deformed from hitting an object, possibly even fragmented. But as Angel peered at the bullet, he saw there was a symbol etched on the side, one that almost looked like one of the runes Bob had carved on his body. "These are enchanted bullets."

"What?" Scott asked, and nearly opened his eyes.

"They make those?" Marc asked, reloading one of his Glocks.

"You can if you want," Xander/Willow replied, his facial expression betraying distaste at the very idea. "This symbol means they can't be stopped; they'll go through anything. They're also indestructible."

"What about adamantium?" Logan asked. Angel knew suddenly what Logan was planning to do.

Xander/Willow frowned in thought and shook his head at the same time. "I don't know. It's doubtful, but -"

"I'll take out the guns," Logan said. He started to stand up, but Angel grabbed him by the arm, and pointed out, "I'm already dead. It doesn't matter to me."

But the way Logan stared back at him, Angel realized quite suddenly that Logan was fighting his own inner demons just as hard as he was, maybe more so. There was something just behind Logan's eyes, something dark and hard, a madness akin to the madness you could see in the eyes of the Sun Plaza people … if they still had eyes. It was so cold and so frightening - a look he hadn't seen since the time Wolfram and Hart had brought out his "second" personality, the assassin - that Angel had to catch himself before he did a double take. Wasn't that gone? There was no way it could be back … right? "He's a god of rage, right? I'm gonna show him what real rage is."

"Logan … " Scott said warningly. If there was more to it, he stopped before he could complete the thought.

It didn't matter anyways; Angel had let Logan go. Better that Weapon X was turned on the possessed then turned on them.

Logan didn't stand more than he sprung to his feet racing up the stairs two at a time, springing his claws as he moved, and he instantly became a focus for the gunfire. You could see the bullets slam straight through him, blood exploding out his back in a crimson mist, his body jolting with the shock, but he kept going, and Logan was on the seventh floor before he'd taken a dozen shots.

Logan ripped through the crowd of people like a thresher, screaming in inchoate, inarticulate rage, a noise that was chilling in its pure rage and pure madness. Heads flew and guns were shredded, and you could hear the sickening rip of flesh as he tore through them like they were nothing. There were at least two dozens, and those without guns still had knives and other bladed weapons - did one of them have Giles's sword? - and there was a dull "thunk" as some were plunged into Logan, straight through his back, buried in his gut.

But he didn't slow down. Angel had never seen him take this much damage - he was still visibly bleeding from the bullet holes that had punched through his torso and legs - but he was still screaming and still fighting like a rabid Berserker demon. He was being held up and propelled by his own rage. He hadn't fought the madness at all; he'd embraced it whole heartedly, went to meet it half way.

Maybe Logan was right. Maybe he was just angry enough to make a god of rage choke on his own bile.

They kept trying to swamp him, but his claws moved so fast they were silver blurs, and they couldn't do it; if they got within range, their limbs were hewn away, their heads neatly severed from their bodies, their torsos sliced in half. And he'd already moved on to others before the rest of their body could fall to the floor.

Even after all the guns were gone, Logan kept killing everything that moved. He was awash in blood, he looked like he was wearing nothing but red, strips of flesh and sinew hung from his claws, and he kicked in doors, going after possessed who were trying to rearm or hide from him. "Oh my god," Xander/Willow gasped, holding a hand to his mouth. He looked slightly green, like he might vomit any second. Blood was trickling down the stairs towards them, a minor rivulet slowly becoming a creek.

"He's gone," Helga said, very matter of factly. "The madness has him."

Marc looked at her, stunned. "Do you mean we have to take him down?"

Helga pulled a gun out of the back of her jeans, and handed it to Marc. "Adamantium bullets, but there's only four. Aim for the head and don't miss." Amazing; she was prepared for this contingency. No wonder Bob trusted her so much.

"It won't keep him down for long," Marc replied, looking at the weapon in disbelief. He didn't want to shoot Logan.

"It just needs to keep him down for a couple of seconds," she replied, a stunningly cold look in her eye. "I'll do the rest."

What the hell was she planning to do?

As it turned out, they'd never know. They could feel the thuds of impossibly heavy footsteps, and they heard a wall crumble with impact, but they couldn't see it. They didn't see anything until the Charunai burst through the wall, holding Logan's throat in one of his massive blue hands. But Logan was stabbing in his claws repeatedly into the Charunai's big, thick head, and its eyes were already melting down its face in bloody streams. Logan's face was flushing red from lack of air, his own left eye lost beneath a fresh gout of gushing blood, and he could have just sliced the Charunai's arm off, but here was the frightening thing: _he didn't want to. _He was so far gone he just wanted to hurt the Charunai as much as possible, make it suffer.

The Charunai made to fling Logan off the railing and down seven floors, but it was effectively blind now and overestimated its distance, so what was left of the railing crumbled as it ran into it, and Logan scissored his legs around the Charunai's neck, still stabbing him through the face. The edge of the floor cracked as loudly as a splitting glacier, and the Charunai and Logan both toppled and fell down the stairwell, Logan still stabbing the guardian demon even as they plunged down into darkness.

The thud as they hit the ground somewhere on the first floor was tremendous; you could feel the stairs quake. But the eeriest thing was the sudden silence that followed afterwards, broken only by the dripping of blood and the soft noise of falling debris.

"Holy shit," Sid finally whispered, speaking for all of them.

Marc stuck his head over the side and looked down the stairwell. Although it was far too dark to see, he could see in infrared - he could see Logan and Charunai by their body heat. "Can he survive all that?"

"Don't worry about Logan," Scott said flatly. He was sitting with his back against the wall at the top of the sixth floor stairwell, his eyes still closed tightly, but he had a very grim expression on his face, his jaw taut. Maybe he didn't see what had happened, but he'd heard it. "He bought you time. Use it."

He was right, of course. There appeared to be no one left alive or even partially intact on the seventh floor; there was now nothing standing between them and the nascent Hellmouth except vast pools of blood and scattered body parts. But it probably wouldn't last for long.

Right - time to get to work, and hope the others had done their parts.


	8. Chapter 8

12 

The domain of Dave was very hard to find - but deliberately so. It was a prison after all, or at least it started off that way; what it was now was anyone's guess.

It had some of the trappings you'd expect from a hell dimension - rivers of seething lava, broken up only by crumbling islands made of equal parts volcanic rock and carbonized flesh and bones - but that was for the tourists. Dave didn't actually live there.

He lived in a fairy tale style castle in the clouds. There was a blanket of coal black clouds, then, above it, a layer of puffy white ones like cotton candy. On top of that layer was a mile long castle made of marble and glass, gilt and gemstones. It was more garish than anything Disney could have come up with; it made Cinderella's castle look sober and tasteful. There were over two dozen towers and minarets, all layered with gold, reflecting the lava light that seeped through the clouds below, and Bob just knew if the "Queer Eye" guys saw this, they'd storm the castle and demand that Dave be less goddamn gay. There was no excuse for a bejeweled leviathan of a castle like this, even if you'd had your taste surgically removed. And precisely who was Dave trying to impress? There was never anyone here to see it.

Well, okay, he was. But he was here to kick his ass, and there was nothing he could do to impress him except give the fuck up.

There was no obvious entrance to the castle, so Bob simply walked up to it and burnt his way through a jewel encrusted wall, hoping that it really pissed Dave off. The halls were plated gold, the floor made of crushed diamonds, all of it so ostentatious he bet even Donald Trump would pause. Some gods just didn't know when to stop. He tested the acoustics in the hall. "We get our clues from the ones who thought they would conquer us, are we too fucked to say the end is here …" Yeah, shitty acoustics, just like he thought. Soft metal just didn't have a good echo.

He heard a rumble, and looked behind him in time to see a metal gate slam down, trapping him in this corridor. He wasn't surprised to turn back and find a river of lava streaming towards him.

It stopped short, and suddenly rose up into a pillar, still liquid and yet not losing cohesion or dripping like it should have - only in the special universes of other gods did the rules of physics change on a dime. The pillar of lava became a humanoid shape, a growing bubble of lava becoming something like a head, cheekbones suggested in the hard clefts of liquid rock, a mouth like a hole, and two motes of bright yellow fire becoming what passed for eyes. They fixed on him, hot and remorseless. "You are a fool," Dave said, in a voice that sounded like a clogged drain.

"I've heard that a lot," Bob admitted.

Dave wasn't amused. "You're just a patsy. Always have been."

"I'm givin' you one last chance. Stop the incursion into my plane."

He made a bubbling roil, like a pan of soup boiling, and it took Bob a moment to realize it was a laugh. "Your plane? You mean your prison. I'm freeing you. See, you're able to move between planes already."

"Hate to break it to ya, Dave-o, but Earth hasn't been my prison for a long time. I got my powers back, and I can go anywhere I want."

"Really? So why did they give you your powers back? Did you kiss their asses enough? Grovel like a good Human?"

"I got them back on my own. They weren't real happy with it, but it wasn't like I was actually gonna go anywhere permanently. I like Earth. I have all my stuff there."

Dave's burning yellow eyes narrowed, the lava of his face shifting in swirling in almost hypnotic patterns. "You're not getting it at all, are you Bob? You think you've outsmarted them, but you don't outsmart a group mind. You know why they encased you in flesh? Because you've always been a sensualist, Bob, and a sentimentalist - they knew it'd keep you entertained and fascinated for an eon or two. They could keep you where they wanted you by feeding a yen, and they've succeeded. They wanted you to get your powers back so you could fight their battles for them, but they knew you'd never trust it unless you seemingly got them on your own, behind their backs. So they set everything up. They used you like they used me. I'm the dumping point for their rage, and you're the dumping point for their lust. Higher beings have to be above such frailties of the mind."

Bob nodded. "Sounds about right."

His eyes widened, the spots of flame growing and licking up his face. "What?"

Bob scoffed and shook his head. "Mate, they encased me in a Belial. I know the ins and out of all bullshit, no matter who it comes from. Did they manipulate you and me? Yeah, of course, like they manipulate Humans and demons alike when it serves them. That's what they - what we - do. I don't like it - I don't like them - but I love my family, and I love my Earth. It is mine in all its wonderfully fucked up glory, and I'm not letting anyone take it away from me. That includes the Powers, if it comes to that."

"A war on heaven, Bob? Again? It didn't work for you last time."

"Times change, people change. Oddly enough, gods never do. That's their fatal flaw."

He took a step towards him, although it was more of a liquid glide. He was giving off tremendous heat, but that wasn't really what it was - it was rage and madness given physicality, something that would reduce a mortal to cinders within twenty feet. "Oh really? Is that my fatal flaw, you arrogant little prick?"

He didn't even see him move - lava simply hit him on the side of his face, throwing him back against the bars sealing off the hall, and burning away the left half of his face in its entirety, from his jaw to the crown of his head. It didn't hurt for more than a millisecond, as the temperature - the power - was too incandescent. Bob tried to shake it off, the lingering sting of a god with far more power than him, and let his own energy fill in the missing contours of his face. He had to remake his left eye in nothing but energy, and it gave everything on that side a weird blue cast, as obviously he hadn't perfected making retinas. Bit of a bugger.

Dave continued glaring at him with his molten hate. "You can't beat me Bob. They hated more than they ever loved."

"Oh, I know. That's why I didn't come alone."

He cocked his head to the side curiously, an amusingly human gesture, and then he made that bubbling noise again. "And what pathetic lie is that? I can sense incursions into my realm, and you're it."

"Sure about that?"

As if on cue, the lava in Dave's torso began to roil, and he looked down in time to see a cobra burst through his liquid skin and dropped unharmed to the floor. It was but the first of a dozen - mambas, rattlers, green snakes and copperheads, all bursting through the lava as if was a mere fog, unscathed and unharmed - and Dave grabbed a handful of them as they came out. "What is -" When he squeezed the snakes hard, trying to burn them, he was so instantly repelled by their own energy his hand dissolved into liquid clots of lava, and the snakes fell with it to the floor, slithering away.

"Even you can't kill the avatar snakes of a death god," Bob pointed out. "Although, you wanna keep trying? I'm kinda curious how much it'll take to get Degei pissed off. He doesn't get angry a lot, but I hear it's quite a show when he does."

Dave looked at him sharply. "Degei?" Yep, even psychopathic gods were afraid of something, and while most gods treated death gods like garbage men, death gods were a fundamental force in the universe, a true elemental, something that couldn't be destroyed. Piss off a death god and you would know no end of torment.

When Dave looked up at him, it was with as much contempt as a man with a lava face could muster. "They can't hurt me, I'm not physical enough."

That's when a thud seemed to echo through the castle, rippling and resonating off the gold walls like his singing never could. Dave looked up, as if he could stare through the ceiling. "What ..."

"Ah, Ganny's arrived. You remember Ganesha, right? The only god who would talk to me for a long time. Great guy. We need more gods like him."

Dave's eyes narrowed so much the fire almost disappeared. "He can't hurt me - he can't hurt anything. Unless he overpowers them with his smell."

Bob wagged a finger at him. "Rudeness won't get you anywhere, Dave. Now admittedly he's a lover not a fighter, but you do remember the effect he has on entropy, don't you? And what is a dimensional tear but entropy speeded up to the power of a googolplex?"

Dave's skin was now bubbling, but it wasn't just the snakes trying to get out of him. The fury was now coming off in an almost palpable way; it stung, smelled of burning lye, and tasted like ammonia. "All you're doing is slowing me down. Nothing you and your lame ass friends can do can stop me. I guess I lucked out that your friends are so pathetic, huh?"

"Luck has nothing to do with it," a female voice said. Dave turned, and Bob could see, over his roiling molten shoulder, a slim, reasonably attractive women with sensibly cut brunette hair, a natty tailored skirt suit in the darkest red, and eyes that were as black as a starless sky. She could have been a lawyer straight from any floor of Wolfram and Hart, except no mortal could have survived even this far. "Bob is the god of misfits, the outcasts, the forgotten and discarded, the freaks and the exiles. I mean, you should see the used up fuck towel that's his avatar." She rolled her eyes, but since she had no pupils or irises, it was more of an implied gesture. "These misfits all band together, you know. Bob, Ganesha, Degei - even the mortals pulled to them are only of the oddball variety."

"Not Ganny," Bob replied. "He's still got name recognition."

"Fine. He's as close to mainstream as this breed ever gets. Sad really." She started walking up the corridor, her heels clicking on the diamond floor. Just from the cant of Dave's head, he knew he was puzzled.

"Wait a second - aren't you a … what the hell do you call yourselves nowadays?"

"Senior Partners," Bob offered.

Dave didn't acknowledge him in any way, presumably because he recognized that he wasn't the threat. "You hate his kind," Dave pointed out, just in case the Partner didn't know that.

She stepped over the slithering snakes delicately, a moue of distaste warping her lips. "Yes, well, we hate you more. And when it comes down to it, the Powers will mostly be destroyed by a weapon of their own design. So either Bob will destroy them someday, or they will destroy him. Either way, it's a good outcome for us."

"He'll do nothing," Dave burbled. "You're just hoping."

The woman just shrugged. "Perhaps, perhaps not. Time will tell."

Dave burned a trough in his own floor, keeping the Partner separated from him. "You're a better shot, Partner, but you're still not enough. You can't stop me."

Since Dave's coruscating back was to him, Bob let his physical self become something in between, something a bit more ephemeral and semi-corporeal, and reached inside himself, burying his own right arm into his "stomach". He'd hidden something in himself, exactly where Dave wouldn't be able to sense it, where it would be lost in his own energy and impossible to read.

The Partner had been right. He was a misfit, an outcast, a weirdo, and most of his friends were too. His friends … and his ex-wives or lovers, depending on what laws you adhered to. Bastet was an "avenger goddess", a daughter of the sun, extremely powerful, although her legend had been eroded until she was just remembered as the "cat headed god" (and that wasn't even true - it was a lion, not a cat), and often taken simply as a fertility goddess, as most female goddesses were reduced to for no reason other than lingering sexism.

But he knew how powerful she was, and he hadn't forgotten - she was his ex-wife (or ex -lover, again depending on what you believed and practiced) - and she'd given him a weapon that could kill anything evil: a blessed knife. But killing evil wouldn't be enough here; Dave was a god, and beyond such a distinction. So Bastet gave him something that could hurt a god, kill them even, and she did have that power - avenger god, daughter of the sun. But people had forgotten; not only people, but gods who never knew her, or didn't know her that well.

It was funny, but sometimes when he saw her it all came flooding back. The reason they split up had nothing to do with how they felt about each other, but where they wanted to live. Bas was done with the Earth plane, she couldn't abide it anymore, but of course he loved it and had family there. They tried a long distance commute sort of relationship, but it just became unworkable, and they realized they just had to end it. But sometimes when they got together, they could both feel the spark - they still loved each other. It was hard not to. She'd asked him if he really needed to do this, and when he assured her he had to, she gave him one of her more lethal weapons.

It was called the "eye of Horus", although it wasn't his eye and really had nothing to do with him. It was a small snow globe sized object that could have been glass, but wasn't. It looked like it contained something liquid reddish black, but it was no more liquid than the container was glass.

It was the last residual energy of Seth, god of chaos and destruction, killed in mythology by Osiris, but really killed by Ammit. Residual traces of his energy - nonsentient, toxic, nearly impossible to contain or control - was captured by Bastet, who imprisoned it behind her own energy made solid. Seth was more or less an embodiment of destruction, of darkness unleashed, and his energy was as corrosive as acid would be to a being made of flesh. You couldn't absorb it, like you could absorb the energies of other gods, because it was not meant to be. Seth could barely handle himself - no one else would have any luck. Bastet had kept it all this time for the simple reason that this was the god equivalent of the "final solution", with the added problem that it was inherently unstable. Yes, it could kill a god, but there was no telling when it would stop killing, how many it would take out before it lost its toxicity. It didn't seem to effect Bas, but then little did.

She said she could bring it, use it, but he insisted it was his fight and he had to do this. Dave was almost a brother after all - everyone thought Bob was the first Power kicked out, but that wasn't necessarily true. He was just the first full Power kicked out; Dave was an ill advised hybrid. That was part of what fed his voluminous rage.

As he pulled it out of him, he tried to keep it cloaked behind his own energy, so Dave couldn't sense it - if Dave had sensed it when he first showed, he'd probably have killed him without bothering to talk. No one with the eye of Horus could mean anything but your death.

The solidified power seemed to start melting on instant contact with Bob's pseudoflesh, her energy even in this non-sentient form recognizing and responding to him. There was no doubt about it - pseudoflesh or not, this was going to hurt. Oh well, no help for it.

Dave stiffened, his lava almost hardening, but he didn't turn to look at Bob, as his focus was on the one he assumed to be the bigger threat to him, the Senior Partner. And to her credit, she saw Bob reach inside himself, but she never looked directly at him, and even though she must have guessed what it was, she kept her eyes on Dave.

"What the hell did you just do to my gateway?" Dave burbled angrily.

She shook her head, her expression mostly blank and yet strangely contemptuous. "I have no idea what you're talking about. But then again, Bob never told me what his plan was, but I've figured it out. I'm just a distraction, the big boogie man that keeps you from noticing he's about to kill you."

Well, she'd committed him to it, so it was now or never. There was simply no way to brace for it, so he simply plunged his arm through Dave's back, and he gritted his teeth against the sudden, sharp feeling of all his psuedoflesh burning away as he pushed his arm in deep, only energy holding him together.

And then, when he was certain he could wait no longer, he sunk his fingers through the semi-liquid membrane of Bastet's energy, and let the tainted remnant of Seth join him in Dave's body.

It would almost be interesting to see if he lived through this.

13

Bren supposed he expected something straight out of an old time black and white horror film, or maybe even the set of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", but that wasn't what Rosewood looked like. It could have been a bland office park behind a ten foot high security fence topped with razor wire, its lawn not so much mowed as scalped. There were a few security spots lighting up parts of the building on this historically gloomy day, but all it did was show how thin the white paint was on what were essentially cinderblocks. They had small islands of flowers on the grounds, roses and azaleas mostly, some California poppies, but they looked sad somehow, like the one daisy that managed to survive at a nuclear ground zero.

Before pressing ahead, Giles cast a spell that put everyone on the grounds asleep. A simple spell, but it was so broad it left him winded, so he had to rest a moment before they continued. But Giles got more time to bank up his reserves, as everything from then on was all Naomi: the fence, the alarm system, all the locks were controlled by electricity. With simple manipulation, she made the gate spring open for them, all doors unlock, and the alarms remain dormant. It was nice to finally have something high tech to confront; sometimes all this mystical shit got so complicated his head hurt.

Although the "waiting room" had many windows and pastel painted walls with hotel quality art hanging on them, the feeling of "prisoner area" didn't go away - and having visited his mother in prison a couple of times, he knew that feeling well. The glass doors were locked with a coded security system, but since they ran on electricity, Naomi was the pass key that got them through it and into the heart of the building.

Although Giles made sure they wouldn't run into any of patients thanks to his spell, there was an undeniably eerie feeling as they walked down the empty corridors, with their cheap white tiles and walls painted a very pale shade of robin's egg blue - a calming color, a pacifying one. Giles had something with him called a "homing stone", a small teardrop shaped crystal on a necklace that you could have picked up at a drug store … well, if the stone wasn't more special than it looked. Bren barely saw any color variations in it, maybe a mild pink glow, but Giles seemed able to stare at it and interpret what it meant.

They were down a third corridor, where the metal doors that lined both sides of the hall seemed to get thicker, and the windows in them smaller and covered with thicker wire mesh, when Kier stopped and suddenly hissed, "Shh!"

They quieted, but after a moment Bren leaned in and whispered, "Wha-" Kier put a hand over his mouth, and just in time, because that's when they all heard it.

Farther down the hall, up ahead of them, there was a small scuff of footsteps. They paused in the sudden silence.

Naomi looked at Giles, alarmed. "Isn't everyone supposed to be asleep?"

"Yes," he replied almost defensively. "But … the gateway may have some kind of protection against minor spells."

"You couldn't have thought of that before?" Kier asked accusingly.

Giles glared at him, his hatred almost palpable. "We do have to find him. If he's asleep like everyone else, it would have made it more difficult. At least this makes our job easier."

"Does it really?" Naomi wondered, and touched a wall. It looked like she was leaning on it, or judging its solidity, but if you looked closely you could see the small sparks of electricity between her fingertips and the wall; she was charging up. "They know we're coming now."

Giles shrugged impatiently. "They probably knew already, as soon as I threw the spell."

Bren shook his head, hating this plan more and more, and let his demon side come out. He knew it wouldn't have been better if he went back to Sun Plaza, but just being in a place like this, quiet and reeking of antiseptics, he felt like he was going to jump out of his skin. He wondered how things were going for the others, and if they were having as much fun as the first visit. "You've got a plan, yeah?"

"Of course." Giles almost sounded offended by the question.

But before he could inform them what it was, a nurse appeared at the head of the corridor, a well built, statuesque blonde in a white pantsuit type of uniform. But she wasn't your usual kind of nurse, even though her figure brought to mind the sexy nurses you might see in a Playboy fantasy.

For one thing, she had a type of triangular shape painted on her forehead in what could have very well been blood. For the second, her eyes glowed with pinprick reddish-orange light buried deep within her otherwise black pupils. The third thing was her jaw unhinged as they watched, becoming not only inhuman but grotesquely large, maybe a foot across and equally wide as it drooped down, and then, without warning, she vomited a long, scorching stream of fire at them.

A fire breathing nurse? Now it seemed perfectly appropriate that they were in an insane asylum.


	9. Chapter 9

14

Logan found himself laying on a white sand beach, the sand as soft as powder, the sky above a silken cerulean drape, while translucent sapphire waves lapped at his feet. He wasn't alone either; laying snuggled up against him was Mariko, her head resting in the crook of his arm as she slept. He knew this was wrong for several different reasons, but he honestly didn't give a shit. Her sun warmed skin smelled wonderful, and in spite of the heat he was glad to hold her against him, feel her softness and warmth. He could have slept forever.

A shadow fell across him, and he opened one eye, squinting up at the interloper. They crouched down, and he could see it was Bob, the sun behind him making it look like his hair was luminous. "Time to go, mate."

He glared up at him. "Fuck you." He then closed his eye and settled against Mariko once more.

But Bob didn't take the hint - did he ever? He grabbed his shoulder and shook it. "Don't make this harder than it has to be. You're dying. You need to wake up now."

Logan slapped out blindly, smacking his hand away. "What part of "fuck you" didn't you understand?"

"Didn't you hear me? You're dying. What part of this scenario makes sense to you?"

He opened his eyes so he could look up and scowl at him. "Can't I have some peace? Jesus, Bob, I just wanna get some sleep."

"And do you know why? You've lost a lot of blood. Think, damn it! What's the last thing you remember before you got here?"

If he hit him would he go away? Better yet, why didn't he just impale him? He was a god - he would recover. He disengaged himself from Mariko and rolled over on his back, but that's when he realized how truly tired he was. That seemed like a great expenditure of energy, even though it wasn't. He laid there in the basking heat, gasping for air he didn't need, and asked, "What the fuck have you done to me?"

Bob shook his head, looking as guileless - and untrustworthy - as he usually did. "Absolutely nothing. The Human mind has an amazing capacity to ease itself into death, and I bet yours has a special gift for that. "

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Bob almost looked pissed off. "What is the last thing you remember?"

"Nothing! I was just …" But the more he thought, the more he began to remember. There was that weird building, the one in Brentwood, the one that smelled like hot metal death. There was the seventh floor …

He remembered taking the first step, lowering his head and raising his shoulders as he prepared to bull through a hail of bullets and get the men with the guns, and he remembered that those bullets they were using felt different as they ripped through him; harder, hotter. Did they go through his adamantium bones or just dent them? He wasn't sure, but he knew instantly that they hurt more than any other bullets, even adamantium ones, and … his rage, which he thought he had under control, just rose up and swamped him in a black wave, one he was suddenly helpless against. The beast inside him suddenly became a thousand feet tall, and the world washed out in red.

Was it just the pain? Or was it something else? Angel had warned him that something happened to you on the seventh floor, that you were overwhelmed with rage, but Logan was so accustomed to dealing with that he thought he could handle it. But apparently not.

All he remembered was being swamped by anger - and then nothing. His memory stopped before he hit the top of the stairs. Maybe that was for the best. He sat up, and asked Bob, "What did I do?"

"You cleared a path. But I'm afraid your job isn't done yet."

Was his "job" ever done? Logan rubbed his eyes and groaned, still feeling far too weary. He really needed sleep; he figured he'd be okay if he got a couple hours downtime. Why wasn't Bob letting him have it? "Let Angel handle it. I'll catch some Z's, then I'll be back in it, okay?"

Bob shook his head. "Can't let you do that. Sleep here is death. You need to wake up."

"I am awake." But was he really? This wasn't an apartment in Brentwood. This was a mindscape, wasn't it? "You're not actually here, are you?"

Bob shook his head. "'Fraid not. Come on, let's get going."

"I'm not gonna be bossed around by imaginary people," he snapped, dry washing his face. Logan tried hard to remember how his fight ended, but couldn't. He thought about asking Bob, but would he know? He was either some kind of emergency "program" left by Bob in his brain, or he was some part of himself that took the form of Bob. "So I got my ass handed to me?"

Bob - or the thing that looked like Bob - considered that carefully before answering. "Not exactly. Considering you were fighting undead crazy people, I think you did pretty well for yourself."

Now that he was focusing, trying to remember what happened to him, he began to feel faint but still powerful echoes of pain. He knew if he were closer to consciousness, he'd be in agony. "Aren't I healing? Why am I not healing?"

"You are, you just took a lot of damage, and you need to get some adrenaline going to speed it along."

"Which means waking up."

Bob nodded. "Yep. What, you think I'm annoying you for fun?"

"If you were the real Bob, you could be, yeah," he pointed out, transitioning to his knees. That act seemed to make him dizzy, so he steadied himself and took a deep breath, glancing back at the sleeping Mariko. Wow, it would be so much nicer to just stay here; so what if he was comatose or dead? At least he was in good company.

Oh right. How selfish a bastard was he? Would he leave everyone else to fight the crazy people and close the Hellmouth? He wanted to - well, part of him wanted to - but the other part of him was disgusted that he'd even entertain the idea. As he slowly stood, his mind coughed up a fragment of … something. A big blue guy choking him while he carved his face off. Then impact and nothingness. "Oh shit, the … uh -"

"Charunai?" Bob offered.

Logan snapped his fingers and pointed at him, nodding. "Yes, that's it. That thing - it's still there, isn't it? I know I can't kill it -"

"You can kill it, mate, it's just that another two will instantly show up to take its place."

He scowled at him. "Which means I can't kill it, as much as I wanna, 'cause I'd just be increasing our problems, right? Does it heal faster than me?"

"It's a guardian demon."

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes."

He sighed, wondering how he made the transition from here to full consciousness. "How do I do this?"

Bob pointed up the beach. "Walk out of the light."

That sounded easy enough - almost too easy, as a matter of fact. But he had to trust that Bob - or the thing in him representing itself as Bob - wouldn't lead him astray, not when it wanted him to live.

There was a darkness on the far curve of the beach, one that almost looked like a copse of trees swallowed by their own shadows, but there wasn't enough definition to say for sure what it was. It looked slightly ominous, in fact.

But that figured, didn't it? Reality was ominous at the moment. So he started walking, feeling incredibly weary, and as much as he wanted to look back, he didn't. If he was going to die, okay, Mariko would be waiting for him; otherwise, it was back to reality.

The darkness seemed to swallow him, become an actual physical presence, and he had to shove himself through it. It was like trying to swim in thick, heavy water, and he had to pull himself to the surface, using muscles that hurt more and more every second.

When he regained conscious and opened his eyes, he did it spluttering, tasting blood in his mouth and his throat, and god did he hurt. He burned with healing, but he still felt bruised deep to the bone, like an elephant stampede had not only been over him, but used him as a kickball. Looking around, he saw himself in a rather large depression on the broken ground floor hallway, just to the right of the staircase. He was alone here in a pool of blood; smeary, blood tinged footsteps indicated that the Charunai had already recovered and gone.

The worst part? The blood was his.

Two dull, hard pains indicated immediate problems. He had butcher knives sticking out of his stomach and left thigh respectively, and it was the one in his left thigh that had almost killed him. It was buried deep in the femoral artery; he'd probably come very close to fatally bleeding out. No wonder he felt so weak and cold.

He pulled the one in his stomach out first, and it was hard not to gasp as the blade ripped open the skin that had started healing around it. He tossed it aside and put a hand over the wound, feeling more of his blood stream out, until it slowed to a trickle. Then he grabbed the haft of the one in his thigh, and braced himself.

The wound had healed around this knife too, but the problem here was major: the artery. He yanked it out as fast as he could, but blood spurted from the newly ruptured artery, and he had to clamp down on his own leg hard, hoping that the artery healed before he lost too much more. He nearly sat up to do it, but his head swam dangerously, so much so he almost passed out. So he raised his leg instead, gripping his thigh so tightly it felt like he was leaving fingerprints in his femur, and waited.

His heart seemed to pound in his head, but finally his healing factor took over and closed the artery once more, and he was able to let it go, wiping his bloody hands on his shirt ... which was already so bloody it was a futile gesture. Oh well.

He couldn't stand up. To say he'd taken a lot of damage was almost an understatement; the Charunai left him for dead for a very good reason. He'd lost nearly half his blood volume, or at least it felt that way, and it took his healing factor a while to replace all that blood. What he needed was a couple of quarts of water or beer; that'd help in a major way. But none of that was forthcoming, and he didn't know how much the presence of a Charunai would fuck things up for the others. Who cared that he couldn't walk? He needed to get off his ass and stop that thing. (A funny thought, as if he couldn't stand he couldn't fight, but he wasn't sweating the details right now.)

He crawled to the stairs, pulling himself along by his aching arms, and then crawled up the bottom steps, pausing to rest a minute. He was feeling a little stronger now, a little more warmed by his healing factor, as his exertions was just the kick in the pants it needed. But he still felt oddly hollow, his head so light and empty it might have been filled with helium. He used the wall and the railing to pull himself up to his feet, then gave himself another second to get used to gravity. "Get going, you stupid motherfucker," he cursed at himself beneath his breath. "Don't be a fucking pussy. Get up those goddamn stairs." Oh god, his kingdom for an elevator.

He had to lean against the wall to climb to the first floor riser, but by the time he hit the second, he could just lean on the railing for support.

His head was too light, his bones too bruised, and he figured that those enchanted bullets must have hurt him pretty bad; perhaps there were other effects he didn't know about. But he had to focus on the Charunai, on keeping it down for a couple minutes. What could?

Decapitation could kill it; stabbing it through its hearts could kill it. But that was it - no other blow was a killing blow. So what could he do to it that would hurt it bad enough that its healing factor would keep it preoccupied?

By the third floor riser, he realized a shadow wasn't following him - he had no vision in his left eye. Reaching up and touching the socket, he found out why. Well, that was probably going to hurt when it grew back, but probably not as bad as a tooth; teeth growing back was always a bitch. No wonder his head felt so light - he was missing a bit of it. He wondered if his eye would grow back a different color - maybe he'd have a brown iris, or a purple one. Black?

He was on the fifth floor,expecting to find resistance but much to his relief finding none; when he did think he spotted someone in the shadows, they seemed to shrink back (what the hell had he done to scare undead crazy people? Oh holy shit, he slaughtered the lot of them, didn't he?) and left him alone. He was in no shape to pursue them. But he heard a heavy thud above him, one that seemed to shake the walls and nearly sent him sprawling, and afterwards he heard Scott say, "I don't want to shoot you through the wall, but I will. Stay back."

Right - Scott got his visor broken. They must have left him behind on the sixth floor riser, and he must have heard the Charunai coming back (they weren't the quietest things in the world). But Scott couldn't see it, and showing it any mercy was a huge mistake. As soon as it figured out Scott couldn't see him until he opened his eyes, it would probably be quiet, and smash him into powder from behind.

He was about to shout up to him that he should shoot him through the fucking wall when he had an idea. He wasn't sure he was strong enough to pull it off, but since when had that ever stopped him from trying? Supposedly he got his hated nickname - "Wolverine" - not just from his claws and being vicious, but for being so goddamn stubborn some wondered if it was a form of mental illness. And leaning against a wall, weak and dizzy from blood loss and missing an eye, he knew he was fucking crazy to even be contemplating fighting a nearly unkillable seven foot demon death machine.

But crazy was good; crazy he could work with.

"Hey, you fucking cowardly piece of shit," he shouted, utilizing nearly all his strength to pelt up the stairs. "We ain't done yet."

"Logan, don't taunt the demon," Scott said, deadpan.

Logan mustered what strength he had as he popped his claws and turned his head so he could see the demon coming with his one good eye, although the Charunai was just standing there, hands on his hips, looking at Logan with what could very well have been disbelief. His expression clearly said '_Why aren't you dead yet, Human? Can't you take the hint?_'

He feigned as best a shot as he could, and the Charunai took the bait, its meaty arm swinging out to backhand him aside like a bratty child. He quickly slashed out and cut its arm off in mid-swing, and then slashed the other one off before it could lift it. It wouldn't buy them much time, but he only needed enough time to brief Scott.

And yet he almost didn't get it. Logan tried to slip past the suddenly disarmed Charunai, but the thing side kicked him in the back, and he went flying with bone shattering force into the wall at the base of the seventh floor stairwell. Only because he turned his head at the last second did he avoid getting his nose shattered.

"That sounded like it hurt," Scott noted, sounding oddly casual for a man sitting blind and helpless at the head of the sixth floor stairwell, just inches away from the killer demon. But the Charunai had turned its back on Scott as its arms began to grow back, as it had already dismissed Scott as a threat. He could only shove him back, and only when the Charunai was directly in his line of sight. Logan was far more annoying, and the Charunai had probably taken the face carving personally.

Logan slumped down to his knees on the riser, and realized he sloshed as he came down. He glanced down to see he was kneeling in a pool of cold blood, and he could trace the source of the stream up the stairs to the …

Seventh floor. The floor was soaked black with blood, and there were random body parts scattered about: arms, legs, heads, random chunks that could be segments of torsos, fragments of internal organs. It was impossible to say how many people had been torn to pieces, but Doctor Frankenstein could have built himself an impressive little army with all the parts.

"I did that," he gasped, not quite able to comprehend it. He didn't _remember_ doing it, but he must have. So that was Bob's - or his conscience's, inner child's, self-awareness's , whatever the fuck's - version of "clearing a path"? He must have ripped apart a few floors' worth of tenants. Jesus.

"You don't remember?" Scott asked, sounding curious.

Before he could reply, the Charunai grabbed Logan by the hair and lifted him off his feet, clearly meaning to throw him back down the stairwell. But Logan stabbed blindly backwards, and skewered the Charunai right in its eyes, making it grunt in pain and toss him aside. He hit the stairwell on his side, and was glad he had adamantium ribs. Too bad he also didn't have an adamantium kidney - fuck, that _hurt_. "Scott, when I tell you to, open your eyes on this fucker, and don't hold back. Send him outside. Got it?"

"He could hurt others."

"He's leaving you alone, isn't he? He only hurts people who attack him or are a danger to the gateway." The Charunai's eyes had grown back - if only his would grow in that fast - and he came thudding across the floor towards him. Logan knew he had lost too much blood, was in too much pain, was hopelessly slow; the Charunai was just going to make mincemeat out of him. He let it make the first move, it threw a punch that he easily ducked, but he made himself so dizzy with the swift movement that he skidded in the blood and hit the floor. Okay, it was now or never, mainly because he wasn't sure he could get back up to his feet again. He sunk both sets of claws in the Charunai's midsection, and shouted, "Now!" He ripped across the demon's stomach from both sides as Scott opened his eyes, and Logan had to hit the floor as Scott's energy hit the thing's back, and the upper half of the demon's body - now separated from its lower half - slammed into the wall and out into the gloomy, humid morning, leaving his legs behind.

Scott closed his eyes the second the Charunai hit the wall, and he asked, with some disgust, "Did I see that right? Did half of him stay behind?"

"That was the plan," he sighed, shoving over the demon's legs, which were still standing. They hit the floor with a sickening squelch. "Let's see him heal fast from that, the smug fucker."

"You could have told me," Scott protested.

"Would you have done it?"

Scott suddenly frowned in his direction. "What's wrong with your voice?"

What? Was there something wrong with his voice? He sat there, trying to figure out what Scott was going on about, when he noticed that the intact walls looked like they were pulsing, lungs breathing in and out. He tasted fresh blood in the base of his throat, and he was shivering with cold, even though he was in the path of the uncomfortably warm wind coming in from outside. Oh, that wasn't good. "I think I hafta rest a moment," he said, and he shoved himself back towards the far wall, near the hole in the outside wall, in some bizarre hope that fresh air - as stuffy and stale as it was - would do him some good. Better yet, maybe it would honestly rain, and he could absorb some of that moisture through his skin. "I'll be okay, I just need a minute …" he mumbled, but he heard his own words slurring together, becoming a blur of nearly undifferentiated syllables.

"What the hell ..?" Scott responded. "How badly are you hurt? Logan?"

But Logan couldn't say anything; he was too tired, and he'd been running on empty for too long. He had a sense of sagging towards the bloody floor, his body totally giving up on him, but he wasn't conscious long enough to feel the impact.

Maybe now he was done. Maybe now Bob would let him sleep.

15

Before venturing up to the seventh floor, it was decided they needed a protection spell. The problem was, the spell of pure joy was considered a hazard, as if Angel was exposed to pure happiness, he just might rip all their throats out. Angel was embarrassed that everyone knew this, and that it was such an obvious and odd weakness.

But Willow (Xander) decided on the spell of serenity as a protection spell; not happiness, but peace and calm. It would have done them no good if they had to fight - it could have been a hindrance - but Logan had carved a bloody swath through the population, and it didn't look like there was a fight on the immediate horizon, clearing the way for the spell.

So Willow cast it, and it was odd to hear the spell coming out of Xander, strange to see his hands glow with energy the millisecond before he threw the spell, a gossamer net of light that seemed to settle over them, the flutter of a moth's wings against their skin before it disappeared. There seemed to be a second or two delay, but then Angel felt so suddenly relaxed and at peace with himself he wondered why he was here. Fighting was such a pointless waste of energy, wasn't it?

Even walking over the bits of body on the seventh floor, he found himself studying Logan's handiwork with complete detachment. He didn't kill these people more than disassemble them, break them down to their component parts. There was almost a strange artistry to it; he could have a second career as a surrealist.

Angel wondered what Willow was worried about when he began to sense the assault on his serenity. It was almost palpable, ill will slamming against his personal cocoon of peace, and he began to feel the almost tidal pull of evil, a siren's song reaching out to the vampire within. He remembered what it was they were supposed to be fighting for, and tried to simultaneously hold on to his inner demon and outer peace at the same time. It was a bit of an awkward fit.

Willow/Xander led the way to an apartment down the hall, the third one on the left, and shoved open the door, although they could have simply walked in through the Logan and Charunai sized hole in the wall beside it.

The burgeoning Hellmouth was an almost beautiful swirl of energy nearly a foot across and either equally deep or ten thousand times deep; its depth seemed to vary depending on where you were. It seemed to be hovering two feet off the carpet in the shattered remains of someone's living room. The words _'hate' _and '_fucking die' _were written all over the walls and the ceiling, almost every inch of the white stucco covered in short, deliberate streaks of blood. Angel found his inner peace draining away with great rapidity.

Willow/Xander started chanting a spell, holding her (his) hands up as she made an appeal to Hecate and to the ebony moon, but then she/he shouted, in perfect English (the spell was mostly Latin), "Get ready!"

Angel didn't know why she said that until he got a good glimpse inside the birthing Hellmouth, and saw there were things on the other side of it. Things with wings and claws, glowing eyes and sharp teeth, things with multiple heads and multiple weapons.

An invading army, just waiting for the gap to open wide enough for them to cross over.

"Come on Bob," he muttered, and it was almost a prayer. If this didn't work, at least they wouldn't live long enough to realize it.


	10. Chapter 10

16

It was really interesting to have most of your body burnt away.

Bob had lost pieces of his body before, but never to lava. It wasn't necessarily an experience he wanted to repeat, but it seared away flesh and nerves so fast he barely had time to register any pain at all. He was still a presence though, still together in an energy sense, and not effected by the lava.

But even his energy self, the core of his being, could feel the poison of Seth's energy, even as it dispersed in Dave, even as Dave seemed to contract in both a physical and energy sense. Dave made to hit him, throw him off with a tendril of lava, but Bob's physical self was already gone, and his energy passed through him harmlessly. Bob withdrew anyways, as Seth's energy was starting to eat through him, poison him simply by proximity. "Fourteen cannibal kings, wondering blithely what the dinner bell will bring," he sang softly to himself.

"What have you done to me?" Dave roared, but it was such a silly question. He must have known, just like he must have known he was as good as dead.

Dave began to lose control of his form almost instantly, and the Senior Partner, who had started backing up the second Bob plunged his arm into Dave's midsection, disappeared around the corner. A good thing too, since Dave's energy and remaining lava expanded out like a belching fireball, destroying his own corridor of gemstones and gold. Bob struggled to keep cohesive as the bit of energy that was Seth chewed through him. Wow - even in your energy form alone, you could hurt. He wasn't never certain about that.

Suddenly an invisible wall appeared between him and Dave, as slick as glass, and he realized he wasn't alone. "I should have known you wouldn't take no for an answer," he said/sent, as familiar energy began to mingle with his, burning Seth's energy away harmlessly.

"I just knew you'd fuck things up," Bas sent, with world weary tolerance. "You kind of do that."

"I shouldn't have chosen a male form," he offered, not sure she'd get the joke. "Men do that a lot. It's a weakness of the gender."

"I thought that was just a weakness of you," she replied, not unkindly. Dave's remaining, tainted energy poured against the wall, but all for naught - Bastet's energy was strong enough to withstand Dave and Seth harmlessly.

Bas's energy combined with his, sending away all pain and banishing all the damage done by Seth, and he almost felt a bit guilty with this nearly sexual energy mingling going on as Dave seemed to die in spectacular flaming agony. But Dave brought this on himself; if he hadn't decided to come out of retirement now, he could have tortured miserable souls to his heart's content in perfect peace.

But what really bothered Bob was the possibility that he had been marred forever as a god killer, that the Powers That Be had found a new job for him: fixing their mistakes. That had better not be true.

Especially since he was bound to be tops on the list.

* * *

Although Nurse Dragonheart could vomit a continuous stream of flames for a good six feet, she was still just a tad short of their position. Which was good, because even though the flames were a foot or two away, the heat was so intense Bren was relatively sure his eyebrows were burning off.

Naomi reacted first. One hand still against the wall, she held out the other and shot a continuous lightning bolt of electricity at the nurse demon, which caught her hard and sent her flailing backwards, temporarily cutting off the stream of flames. Giles then shouted some kind of spell, and tossed his knapsack full of spell crap at him, which Bren barely caught before it hit the floor. "It's a Morpyrous demon," he said, by way of explanation. "It can assume a humanoid form for hours at a time, but to use its flame abilities it has to revert at least partially to its true form."

At least he knew what the fuck it was. "How do we kill it?"

"It's not that hard; broken neck, decapitation, severe brain injury, severing of the main artery in its stomach. The usual."

Only Giles and his plummy accent could make "the usual" sound anything but sarcastic. "So why'd you toss me the bag?"

Giles shouted something else and raised his hand at the demon as it regained its feet and vomited more flames at them, but this time it seemed to hit an invisible field - the spell Giles had just thrown. From the way Giles was grimacing, it might not hold for long. "There's a holy water bomb in there. How's your throwing arm?"

Oh yes, one of his holy water bombs - Bren was proud to say he invented those. Little glass balls like Christmas bobbles, only stoppered and filled with holy water, usually the stuff he got from the Church of the Stone Temple. A good hard throw would shatter it on its victim, and shower them with water. But he made them for vampires, which he couldn't help but think as he found the smooth glass globe and pulled it out. "I don't know. What d'ya need?"

"Throw it in its mouth. It should shut down the fire production for a minute or two."

Kier took the water globe from his hand. "Sounds like a job for me," Kier said, and aimed only briefly before lobbing it straight into the flames coming from the nurse's distended jaws. It was a beautiful direct hit - how the globe hadn't melted in that fiery furnace of the demon's flames he had no idea - and the flames died suddenly, as the nurse demon gulped and … well, she didn't choke, just spluttered a bit, like she'd swallowed a fly.

Giles pulled out the sword he had sheathed on his back, but he'd barely cleared the sheath by the time Bren pulled his gun, took aim, and fired. The first only hit the she demon in the shoulder, but he corrected for the slight pull to the left, and the second shot entered the center of her face and blew out the back of her skull in a sudden spurt of blood and brain matter. Her blood was greenish black. Eww.

Giles stared at him as the demon's body keeled over and hit the floor with a sickening squishy thud. "I could have handled it."

He shrugged. "Yeah, but you said severe brain injury. That'll do, right?"

Giles took another glance at the dead demon, and the brains splattered all over the end of the hallway. (They had black brains? Double eww.) After a moment, he nodded. "Yes, yes … I'm pretty sure that did it."

"So that's it?" Naomi asked, sounding surprised. "This seems way too simple."

"It was supposed to be, more or less," Giles admitted, resheathing his sword. "That's why we were sent here."

"Really?" Bren replied, wondering if he should be offended by that or not. "So we got the easy job?"

"Well … not so much easy as easier," Giles clarified. "By comparison."

That was probably true, but it didn't make him feel much better.

He wondered how the others were doing, and if things were going as well for them.

* * *

The opening honestly didn't look big enough, but they started coming through anyways.

The first ones through were spiky, vaguely troll like demons stepping through the burgeoning Hellmouth, but they didn't get very far, as Marcus walked over, and said, "Welcome to America, where we have more weapons than sense." He then proceeded to shoot them at nearly point blank range, but not with one of his guns - he'd recovered the only single gun with enchanted bullets that had remained intact after Logan's rampage, and it punched through them like small missiles, splattering demon blood and bits over the waiting army on the other side of the opening.

Helga joined him with her own gun - no enchanted bullets - but they both unloaded inside the Hellmouth, filling the room with the stench of cordite. Eventually they ran out of ammo, but by that time the Hellmouth did something odd: it seemed to contract, and then the swirling energy disc that made up its most visible part seem to switch the direction it was moving in. Did Willow do that? Someone else? (They were all working in tandem, so it was hard to say.)

There was really no way of telling, and there was no time for it. They must have known their time for usefulness was coming to a close, so they started slipping through the rip anyways, demons with multiple jaws and tentacles for limbs, all after one thing: Xander/Willow. Clearly they had determined that she/he was the biggest threat to them, so the others moved to protect her/him. Marcus pulled a nasty looking knife and took off his gloves, apparently willing to find out if his own personal poison would work on demons, while Helga pulled out her machete and started chopping anything that moved, and Saddiq stuck with hand to hand, but since his skin was unbreakable that made things no easier for the demons.

Angel had his sword, which he barely had time to pull out before a tentacle snaked around his leg, attempting to pull him down. He hacked its tentacle off, but then he was blindsided by another tentacle, sending him crashing into the far wall. Then a humanoid demon came at him, a two headed thing with brick red scales and an inexplicable muff of black fur around its necks, and he let it impale himself on his sword. Then he ripped it out the side, splattering its sizzling guts on the carpet (they were acidic, eating through the floor), and saw his sword was sizzling too, melting. Shit!

He tossed it away and gave the next demon that tried to grab him a backhand fist to the face, before turning into a kick which he accidentally put through the chest of a demon who looked like the offspring of an avocado and a porcupine. (How was he supposed to know it was hollow?) A tentacle slapped out his leg from under him and sent him falling on his ass, but when the tentacle came back the second time, he grabbed the melting remains of his sword and used the sizzling haft to nail the damn thing to the floor. Its owner screamed - from where he wasn't perfectly certain - and he jumped up to his feet in time to grab a demon that somehow got past Saddiq and snapped its neck like it was made of cartilage.

The building was now shaking, like they were having an earthquake, and fragments of the ceiling were salting down on them as Willow/Xander was shouting the last of the spell above the din, and the demons seemed to get frantic. There was no time for anything fancy - Helga chopped them in half, Marcus gutted them or dropped them by touching them (some were susceptible to his toxin; some were not), Saddiq snapped their necks and backs like they were made of rattan, and Angel simply put his fist through their faces … if they had faces. If they didn't, he just hit the most likely looking part of their anatomy.

Finally Willow got through the last of the spell, and there was an odd noise, like an explosion played backwards: a sudden, hard noise that died away into nothingness. Along with it, the demons disappeared, leaving behind nothing but their blood.

The Hellmouth was gone.

The earthquake stopped, and Xander/Willow dropped to his knees, head hanging down, hands hanging limping at his side.

Angel did a visual survey of the room, but it looked like everyone survived it. Both Helga and Marcus looked bloody and bruised, and some demon had managed to break Saddiq's skin and leave claw marks across his face in three deep furrows across his cheek, but everyone was relatively intact and still on their feet. Well, save for Xander.

He walked over to him, but before he could touch him, Xander looked up, sweat drenched hair hanging down and obscuring his eyes, and Willow said, "Whoa. That was … heavy."

"You okay?"

"I'm fine, but I think Xander's a little … I think he's out."

"Out?" Angel replied, not sure what to make of that.

"Out cold. I had to channel a wicked amount of energy, and I don't think he was ready for it. He told me to do it anyways, but it's weird to be suddenly alone." She attempted to stand, but Xander had clearly been in control of his body most of the time, and she nearly fell on her (his) face before she got to his (her) feet. Angel grabbed Xander's arm and hauled him to his feet, holding his arm until she steadied. She nodded a thanks, blowing the bangs out of Xander's eyes.

"What's the odds this place is structurally sound?" Marc asked, looking up at the cracked ceiling.

"I wouldn't accept any odds," Helga said. "Most buildings aren't built to take dimensional rifts. I suggest we haul ass before we're buried neck deep in drywall and support beams."

Marc nodded, holding his left arm like he'd hurt it. "Seconded."

There was no need for a discussion at all - they left, and tried hard not to slip on the blood coating the hallway as they made their way to the stairwell. The silence was absolute, and genuinely eerie. Save for them, there was no one left alive in this entire apartment complex.

Looking down at the sixth floor riser, he could see Scott still sitting at the head of the sixth floor staircase, but on the riser, beside a rather big hole in the wall that wasn't there before, was Logan, laying face down in a pool of blood. "What the hell happened?" Marcus exclaimed, racing down the stairs to Logan.

"That big blue demon came back up," Scott explained, turning towards their voices while keeping his eyes tightly closed. "Logan came up after it. We got it outside, but Logan collapsed out right afterwards. I guess it must have hurt him pretty badly."

Marcus turned Logan over, and gasped in horror. "His eye's gone!"

"What?" Scott asked.

"His left eye socket is nothing but a bloody mess," Marc reported, putting his hand lightly on his throat. "He's got a pulse, but it ain't good. I think he's still bleeding."

Willow, still standing beside Angel in case she needed help keeping Xander's body upright, put a hand to her mouth. "Oh god, the poor man."

"Shouldn't he have mostly healed by now?" Scott asked, sounding confused.

"The enchanted bullets could've really hurt him," Helga said, her tail twitching as she stood almost protectively over Logan. Between her and Marc, Angel was pretty sure that any big bad that got the idea to go after Logan right this second probably wouldn't live long enough to realize it had made a huge mistake.

Marc looked up at Helga, and while Angel couldn't see his eyes through his goggles, just the way he scowled transmitted reams of information. "Could it have punched through his adamantium?"

She shrugged helplessly with her hands, looking disgusted for having to do it. "I have no fucking clue. Can he heal from that if it did?"

Now it was Marcus's turn to shrug and shake his head. That was an unknown - an unknown that could be making Logan suffer pretty badly.

Willow looked down the stairwell, clearly more confident in her ability to maneuver Xander's body solo, and just the way she stared at the sixth floor stairs, Angel figure she'd spotted the trail of blood that marked Logan's upward passage. He'd been bleeding all the way up; he'd never stopped. "I can't say I know him," she said tentatively. "But if he gets shot up, falls seven stories down, and yet manages to get up, climb seven flights of stairs, fight a demon and win, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say he's not going to die that easily."

An excellent point, and definitely a valid one, but no one was quite ready to be optimistic yet.

Marc picked up Logan, throwing him over his shoulder, and Saddiq helped Scott up and started leading him down the stairs, his own bullet wound temporarily forgotten.

They'd won the war, but the battle wasn't over yet. They still had to get out of this building alive, before it collapsed on their heads.

Hadn't they earned something a little simpler, a little easier? Angel felt like they had, but he knew nothing was ever that easy.


	11. Chapter 11

17

They all reunited at the demon hospital, which seemed like a sad commentary on everything, and Angel imagined that it was.

As always, they were reluctant to treat regular Humans, but then Helga pointed out that Logan was Bob's avatar, and the staff couldn't possibly move fast enough to help. Saddiq, Marcus, Scott, and Willow/Xander also received help in the wake of the great wave eager to help Logan. Angel sat with Willow in the corridor where rows of plastic chairs were set flush against one wall, where she ate a bag of jelly beans she found in Xander's coat pocket, and looked on in wonder at the demons and Humans milling about in hospital scrubs. She didn't realize places like this existed, although she admitted it made sense. She didn't know what to do to bring Xander around, but she decided to stick around until he was back. She also had her coven back in Ireland conjure up some red quartz glasses, which she gave to Scott so he could actually open his eyes now. When he saw how badly injured Logan actually was - and he was shockingly pale, almost vampire pale - he grimaced, and didn't make a smart assed remark.

Giles and the others came in, looking fairly well. And Angel got to tell them how the building seemed to collapse in on itself, just pancaked, before they were ten feet from it, which was why he and some of the others had plaster dust on them. But at least they escaped, which was something. Giles told him about the Morpyrous demon Nurse, and the quick resolution of her. Willow offered them all jelly beans, but only Bren took one.

The doctor - a female Persaid demon, with the name Pylon (Doctor Pylon? Why did Persaid demons insist on such inappropriate names?) - came out to tell them they were honestly puzzled by Logan's physiological responses, and the fact that he had a bunch of metal in him, but they were giving him fluids and kind of hoping he'd recover on his own. At the moment, there was nothing they could do for his missing eye.

Bren pointed out that Bob could give him his eye back, like he'd given Xander his eye back, but they had to wait for him to show up. The problem with that was they had no idea when he was going to show up. He must have been successful since the Hellmouth closed without direct resistance, but he never said if he was coming back right afterwards. Everyone just assumed, but with Bob, you never could tell.

Oh hell - knowing him, he was probably just surfing somewhere.

* * *

It was a beautiful oasis, a small copse of date palms with long, wispy fronds that shaded them from the high yellow sun, surrounding a pool as silver as molten platinum, and as long as a hotel swimming pool. 

It was a beautiful place, but warm, and in honor of that Bob wore nothing but board shorts, namely his bright blue ones with neon green and yellow clovers and horseshoes on it, the ones that clashed with absolutely everything. Just wearing shorts also allowed him to make sure he had reincorporated correctly, with all parts present and accounted for. Bas also helped him make sure of that, although she criticized his shorts. "Why do you insist on dressing like a court jester?" she wondered.

He would have taken offense if he didn't resemble that remark. "I refuse to be taken seriously," he told her. "I'll be taken seriously when I'm dead."

"That doesn't make sense."

"I know." He grinned at her, and she just scowled at him. She was pretty when she scowled.

Her current form was Humanoid, her skin the exact hue of cinnamon (a deep reddish brown), her face mostly Human, although her eyes were definitely feline and a sort of bright amber color that you just didn't encounter much in real life. Also her hair looked short and sleek, a fine sable color, but when you touched it you could feel that it was actually fur. It was strange, but quite nice when you got accustomed to it.

They were sitting by the pool … or no, she was, topless, wearing only a gold batik sarong that was an attractive contrast to her reddish-brown skin. He was laying down, his head on her thigh, and she stroked his hair as he stared up at the clear sapphire sky. This was Bas's realm, a place he knew well. A gorgeous place to visit, but he couldn't see living her - and she felt the same way about Earth, hence their split up. Bas may not have liked the realm, but at least she understood the enjoyment of having a physical form, however transiently. "I don't see why you want to go back there," she said with a sigh. She really wasn't asking him to explain, as they'd already been over it; it was simply a rhetorical question now.

"Thanks for the save, sweetie. I owe you one."

"One?" She stared down at him, her face blocking the view of the sky.

He grinned at her, in a way he knew she thought was charming, and yet also an incitement to general violence. "It's metric."

She tapped her fingernail/claw hard on his forehead, just to make a point. "You're just being a smart ass so I'll kick you out."

"No, I'm just being a smart ass. You know I'm good at it."

"Too good." She looked off at the horizon, where her ziggurats and hanging gardens broke up the fields of golden sands. "They're not worth it."

He knew she was referring to Humans. "Oh hell hon, none of us are worth it when you get right down to it. That's not the point."

"No, the point is to piss off all the other gods, isn't it?"

"I can't reveal my trade secrets, sweets."

She removed her leg out from underneath him suddenly, so his head hit the sand reasonably hard. "Ow."

Bastet stared down at him, glaring, but not in a truly angry way. She was more annoyed than anything. "One day, the Powers could totally abandon you, and if they do, the others will come for you. I may not be there to save you."

"I know." He sat up, brushing sand out of his hair. "But that day probably won't ever come. The Powers won't totally cut the leash 'cause they're afraid of me. Or perhaps I should say what I represent."

She cocked her head curiously. "What do you represent?"

"Anarchy. No one should ever have been able to break away from a group mind; no one should have had any sense of individuality. But I did it, and if I did, someone else could too. What will become of the Powers then? I'm sure they don't want to find out. They need me around as an example of what happens if you don't go along with the flow." He smiled bitterly. "I'm the thing that should not be."

She ruffled his hair. "I'm glad you are."

"You're only saying that because I owe you favors."

Even though it was a joke, she grinned, showing off sharp feline teeth. "You bet."

He stood and brushed sand off his shorts, shaking his head in mock disapproval. "You ex-wives are all the same."

"There will always be a place for you here, you troublesome smart ass," she said, with a certain amount of weary affection.

"Thanks. I'll keep that in mind." He reached down and took her hand, kissing the back of it in love and respect. She was a great lady; the Human race should have mourned the day she turned her back on them for good. But of course, they'd already forgotten about her, relegated her to other people's history.

"They're not worth it," she sighed, aware this was an argument she couldn't win.

Bob shrugged, and gave her a lazy smile. "Neither am I," he admitted, then stepped outside of Bastet's tropical paradise, and returned to his adopted home.

* * *

Angel was about to make an excuse to find a back room and get some sleep - the sun was up somewhere beyond these thick walls, he could feel it, and it was making him feel much more tired than he had any right to - when suddenly there were gasps in the front room, and Angel got a familiar sensation of power. 

Well, finally!

Bob turned the corner from the lobby and came down the corridor, looking more rested and relaxed than he had before. "Bubbalehs! So, we slew the dragon again, eh?" He was wearing his usual leather pants and boots, but had adopted a green t-shirt that had printed on it: "I Lost My Car Keys In Leighton Buzzard". It was rare he didn't understand Bob's shirts - he usually understood them but didn't get them - but he was glad when it happened.

Marcus stood up from his chair. Everybody was here, filling the chairs, save for Logan, and that's why Angel knew what Marc was going to say. "Logan needs your help."

"Does he? What's he done - ouch!" Bob suddenly exclaimed, putting a hand up to his left eye. "Man, what the fuck did he do to his eye?"

They all exchanged quizzical looks. But Angel figured that Bob must have reached out to Logan mentally, and did a kind of mental sense assessment, reaching into Logan's mind. Just because he didn't have any power in him didn't mean that the connection between them wasn't still there. Becoming an avatar was a more or less permanent thing, as far as he understood it.

It was Scott that answered Bob's question. "We don't really know. He just lost it at some point."

"Fabulous," Bob sighed sarcastically. "That boy's loonier than a wombat in underpants sometimes. Okay, I'll go fix 'im, but he'd better know this is the last time. Eyes don't grow on trees."

Willow looked at him, and whispered, "Wombat in underpants?"

Angel just shrugged. He didn't get it either, but then again, he was glad he didn't. This was one of those things he filed in the category "better off not knowing".

As Bob walked past them, he paused and suddenly took a couple of steps back, so he was right in front of Willow. "Where's Xander?" he wondered.

Willow grimaced, and it was funny in the sense that it was clearly a Willow expression, and yet it was Xander's face showing it. "He passed out. I'd wake him up, but shouting doesn't seem to work."

"No he's not," Bob said, suddenly frowning, his eyes staring at a nowhere point just north of Angel's shoulder.

Willow frowned to, in total befuddlement. "No he's not what?"

Bob crouched down in front of her so he'd be closer to eye level, and asked, "Were you grabbed at some point? During the fight?"

She shook her head, and Angel suddenly had a bad feeling about this. What was Bob getting at? "No, the others were good at keeping the demons away from me."

"I don't mean by the demons. I mean did _something_ grab you? A feeling, a sense of power?"

She considered the question carefully, biting her lip (well, Xander's lip). "Yes, but I was channeling a lot of power."

"Who did you invoke? Hecate? "

As Willow nodded, Giles shifted forward on his seat, and asked the question that was surely going through all their minds. "What's wrong?"

Bob sighed and sat back on his haunches, rubbing his hands on the legs of his pants. "Xander's gone. I think he was taken. The problem is, I gotta figure out who did it."

Willow's eyes widened. "Gone? What do you - you don't mean dead, do you?"

"No, not at all. It's just his soul got snatched. " Bob stood up, scowling in thought. "Now why would Hecate grab a soul? Payment?"

"Hold on," Willow exclaimed, jumping to her (Xander's) feet. "You're saying someone stole his soul right out of his body, and _I _never noticed?"

Bob shrugged with his hands. "You were casting a heavy spell. You probably could have gotten gut shot and you wouldn't have noticed until it was all over."

Angel watched Xander's hands curl and clench, a nervous Willow gesture that still looked odd coming from him. Of course it wasn't him anymore; his body was a shell that Willow just happened to be driving. "What happens if I leave his body before we get his soul back? I'm astral projecting, you know! I'm not really here! I mean, I am … but I'm not!"

"Depends on how it was removed and for what purpose," Bob said, as casually as if discussing menu options. "He could be simply comatose, or a soulless murdering fiend, or he could just drop dead. Depends."

Willow turned to him in wide eyed terror, and Angel wished he could say something comforting, but he had nothing. He should have known they got away too clean, too easy - they left someone behind, and they never even realized it.

Damn it, he knew something like this would happen. He knew he never should have let Xander join the team.

* * *

To Be Continued ….. 


End file.
